


an ocean of stone

by Thealmostrhetoricalquestion



Category: Shadowhunters (TV), The Shadowhunter Chronicles - All Media Types, The Shadowhunter Chronicles - Cassandra Clare
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Medieval, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, BAMF Alec Lightwood, BAMF Magnus Bane, Blind Character, Canon-Typical Violence, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Fluff and Humor, How Do I Tag, M/M, Magic, Magic Alec Lightwood, Plotty, Prince Alec Lightwood, Prince Magnus Bane, Romance, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Slow Burn, Slow Burn Magnus Bane/Alec Lightwood
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-21
Updated: 2018-02-20
Packaged: 2019-03-07 18:20:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 23,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13440531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thealmostrhetoricalquestion/pseuds/Thealmostrhetoricalquestion
Summary: “We’ll take them with us,” Magnus decided, dagger still pointed at Alec. “Better to come back with the wrong people than to come back empty-handed, and they may know something. The King can decide what to do with them when we get to our Kingdom.”Another Kingdom, Alec thought faintly.Another King.A smirk lit up Magnus’s face, and Alec was halfway forward, anger shooting through him, when something heavy came down on the back of his head, and he dropped swiftly into the waiting blackness.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Um. UM. I have a billion other things that I should be writing, but I decided to drag something out of the depths of my laptop instead. The whole thing is roughly 125k long, bloody hell. Anyway, I wrote this before the kerfaffle with Jace's actor, so he's a big part of this, and I'm not changing that, but he won't be involved in any of the ships. This is a slow burn, beware of that, and there is some violence, but not very graphic violence. I may change the rating later, and add tags as I go. I really hope you enjoy it!

The cottage was silent, barring the scratch of a blunt quill against yellow parchment. Nobody in the South Kingdom bothered with letters anymore, since ink was hard to come by and even harder to come by if you wanted ink that wasn’t frozen solid. The cottage on Little Street was just as cold as every other house, and yet the ink there never froze. 

Alec checked his markings for the fourth time and frowned as he made another correction. He was a good reader, and he loved writing, but after two hours of staring at a block of text, the words had begun to dance mockingly across the page. 

It would have been a lot easier to concentrate, he thought exasperatedly, if there hadn’t been a jar of teeth in various states of decay on the table in front of him. He had pushed the jar as far away from him as he could in an attempt to forget about them, but they still caught his eye, square yellow fish swimming in pickled juices. 

Finally, Alec set his quill down, satisfied that his notes made sense. He settled a crick in his jaw and yawned, widely, before glancing up in search of his tutor. 

In the old rocking chair in the corner of the room, Luke had fallen asleep beneath a pile of soft grey furs. Alec could just see the top of his head peeking out from beneath the blankets, but the layers did nothing to muffle the thick snores that filled the room. Alec had been so busy concentrating that he hadn’t noticed the noise. He put his knuckles in his mouth to stop himself from laughing as another snore shook the cottage. He had always thought Luke was too dignified to do something as plebeian as snoring. 

Sighing fondly, Alec shook his head. Luke had been tutoring him for two years, and although the lessons were always different, Luke never changed. He remained stern and remarkable, and his ability to fall asleep in the most awkward of places and positions had only improved over time.

Alec assumed it was a side-effect of getting old. It didn’t make him long for old age; from the way Luke muttered under his breath irritably from time to time, it seemed like a hard, toiling thing, and it came with creased skin and brittle bones, plus a hard, cynical nature. 

Quietly, so as not to wake Luke, Alec abandoned his work and made his way to the window. The cottage was small, only one floor and two rooms; a door led off from the main room into a short hallway, which turned into Luke’s bedroom and adjoining utilities. It was an old building; the house rattled and squeaked, shaken by the wind. The water system whistled in complaint as it squeaked to life in the corner, its polished brass skin shining brightly. The windows were heavily shuttered, and yet a cold breeze still swept through the room, chilling Alec to the bone. 

A floorboard croaked beneath his foot, but thankfully Luke didn’t stir. Settling down on the window seat, Alec adjusted his cloak so that the hem no longer brushed along the damp floor, and then he peered through the shutters. The glass had gathered a lace of silver snowflakes. 

Outside, snow fell heavily on the South Kingdom, painting the streets white and the sky grey. The clouds were edged with an ominous blackness and the promise of a storm hung in the air. 

Alec’s eyes, as they often did, turned to the Kingdom Wall. 

There were only two places in the South Kingdom where you could see beyond the Wall. The first was obvious – the tallest tower of the Castle, where Alec lived. The tower in the West Wing was so tall that it could house giants, should giants ever come for tea, and those that had only ever seen it from the ground swore that it touched the sky. They had a much more glamourous view of it than Alec, who was forced the sweep the cobwebs from the walls of the tower every time his other tutor found something wrong with his attitude. Character building, his tutor called it, but all that had built inside Alec was a burgeoning hatred for the spindly woman who taught him how to write and read. 

The second place was rather more secretive. Here, at the cottage on Little Street, Alec could somehow see both the Wall and what lay beyond it. Alec didn’t know what Luke had done to the windows, but something granted them a clear view over the Wall that faced the sea. He knew that it was magic that made it possible, but he wasn’t privy to what kind. 

The Wall had stood proudly for at least thirty years, a mass of black bricks that rose up for a hundred feet. There was no earthly way of seeing over it, not from the little homes of the villagers.

Beyond the Wall lay the sea, and across the sea lay the Bridge. The Bridge was endlessly long, a winding road of blue stone edged with dying wildflowers and black ash. Alec could never figure out why Luke called it a Bridge when it didn’t seem to lead to anywhere in particular. A bridge was supposed to be a pathway between two places, but the South Kingdom marked the end of the sea, and the bridge cut across it, pointing at the Northern Mountains, but not quite seeming to reach them. 

Luke’s snores cut off abruptly. The rocking chair began to creak lowly.

“Father used to say it would take an entire lifetime to cross the bridge,” Alec murmured quietly. He pressed his fingertips against the grimy window and stared out at the sea. He had never seen the sea move, not once in his life. It had always been that way, a vast expanse of motionless black water, streaked with ribbons of blue and green. Each petrified wave rose up in sharp peaks and remained there, lifeless. A whispered rumour told of a time when the ocean roared with life, but Alec was sure that it was just that; a rumour. 

“I don’t believe him,” Alec said. He withdrew his hand and rubbed his fingertips together, watching dirt flitter down onto his lap like dust swept from a mantelpiece. 

“Your Father is the King, and the King is always right. Isn’t that what they say?” Luke’s tone said plainly that he didn’t think anyone was always right, apart from himself, no matter who they were. 

Luke opened one brown eye and stared at Alec. His other eye remained closed, as it always did. Alec often wondered what colour the closed eye was – knowing Luke, it seemed impossible that it could be brown, like the other eye. That was too normal, too ordinary. 

“They say it to his face,” Alec agreed. He looked back to the window, at the streets blanketed in snow, down to the black Wall that ringed the Kingdom, and out, out to the still sea. 

“His advisors are always tripping over themselves to agree with him,” he said disdainfully. “I don’t know why, considering there isn’t much to advise him on anymore. We’ve been a peaceful place for years. There’s no one left to have conflict with.”

“There are a lot of things that don’t make sense in life, Young Prince,” Luke said stiffly. “But I tell you now, being afraid of power isn’t one of them. Your father might be a coward at the best of times, but he’s still got power in the eyes of his people.” 

“The Painted Priests don’t like to agree with him, but they do so nonetheless,” Alec continued. He elected to ignore Luke’s opinion of his father, since he couldn’t really argue with it. Still, it felt wrong to call his own father a coward.

“The Painted Priests like to think they’re the only ones with anything worth saying around here.” 

Alec rolled his eyes. Luke had made his opinion of the Painted Priests perfectly clear on a number of occasions. He was a very opinionated person, unafraid of consequences. It was a wonder that King Robert had allowed his son within ten metres of the man, but after Alec’s mother had died, the King had seen fit to introduce as many tutors into Alec’s life as possible. 

The Painted Priests were mysterious creatures, men of fierce religion and habit. Alec knew them all - all twelve of them, but he barely glimpsed them nowadays. Mostly, they stayed tucked away inside their respective temples, arranging what needed to be done in the Kingdom and training the sentries. 

Alec couldn’t find anything wrong with them himself, but saying so would incur a lecture, something that Alec always hoped to avoid. 

Luke heaved himself up out of his rocking chair, shoving off his furs. They landed in a pile on the dirty floorboards, which groaned under Luke’s bare feet as he walked towards the table. 

“I don’t know how you can stand to walk without shoes in this weather,” said Alec. There were a lot of things that he didn’t understand about Luke. He liked to remind him that Alec was barely twenty and Luke was much older, and therefore much wiser, and so there were a thousand things that Alec wouldn’t understand yet about the world. Alec didn’t particularly like the reminder. 

“I’ve seen a lot of people with frozen toes and blue fingers. I’m surprised yours haven’t fallen off yet.” 

“You haven’t seen them,” Luke reprimanded him. “You haven’t seen anything more dangerous than the Sliproads you use, and you only use those when I tell you to.” 

Alec’s cheeks flushed red with embarrassment. He had only heard about the frostbite victims from Izzy, who often hung around the Temple doors, eavesdropping on the Death Eaters. Unlike Izzy, who had a morbid sense of curiosity, Alec didn’t have the stomach for illnesses or injury. Even hearing about it made him feel sick, and Luke knew it. It wasn’t something he was proud of. 

“I still don’t see why I have to use the Sliproads, not in the Daytime. The streets are perfectly safe.”

Alec slid off the window seat and observed as Luke glanced over his notes. The table was actually a long slab of pockmarked wood held up with stacks of old, rotten books, and laden with bottles of this and vials of that and piles of wax that Luke had melted with a click of his fingers. 

Luke slammed one hand down on top of the table and Alec jumped. Luke had a surprising amount of strength. 

“Your people use the Sliproads. They use them at night and day, and they don’t complain about it. Your father hired me to teach you the ways of a Prince, and the ways of the people, the things that those stuffy women up at that castle wouldn’t dream of knowing.” Luke scoffed, batting at a glass vial that stood just out of reach. 

“You don’t teach me those things, though,” Alec argued. He wasn’t angry, and he hated to argue with Luke, mostly because it was always fruitless, but generally Luke didn’t give him a reason before he told him to do something. Alec liked to have a reason, even if it meant questioning his tutor. “You teach me magic.” 

Magic had been forbidden since before Alec could remember. Even had it not been against the law, nobody in the Kingdom would dare to use it. They were too afraid. 

Luke stopped, fingers still curled around the vial. He sighed heavily. Alec thought he looked older suddenly, a lot frailer. “I teach you what you need to know to survive your reign. What your father doesn’t know won’t hurt him.” 

Luke waved a dismissive hand, signalling the end of their conversation, and then set about uncorking the vial. Alec knew that whatever was inside was probably dangerous. Plenty of things in Luke’s home seemed prone to exploding at the most inconvenient times. 

“It might hurt him, if it’s magic,” Alec pressed. “It’s not as if magic is harmless. There’s a reason that it’s been illegal all this time.”

“And do you know the reason?” 

Luke snorted when Alec didn’t reply. He placed the open vial down on the table in favour of leafing through a pile of parchment. Muttering, he pulled out a yellowing sheet, torn and dirty at the edges. Alec accepted it warily, stepping closer to the table. It looked innocent enough, at a first glance. There was a diagram on the piece of paper, scrawled hastily in black ink. He couldn’t make sense of the writing on the page. It was written in a language that he hadn’t studied, one that was obviously old and halfway to being forgotten. 

The drawing, however, he understood. 

“Is this really possible?” Alec whispered. Silence blanketed the house. He could hear the muffled patter of rain against the window, rain that would soon begin to freeze. The South Kingdom had never seen a day without snow. 

Luke regarded him solemnly. “Yes, it is. I can do it. You can too. You just have to know how.” 

“Fire isn’t allowed,” Alec murmured. He didn’t feel afraid exactly, but something similar to fear began to grow inside of his, roiling and churning behind his bones. “It’s illegal, just like magic is. Fire _is_ magic. It’s the worst kind, Luke. Why are you giving me this?” 

“Believe me, Young Prince,” Luke interrupted, his voice low and dark. “There are much worse kinds of magic out there that I’m not teaching you, you can trust me on that.” 

Alec stayed quiet. He didn’t know the history of the world – nobody did, not anymore – but he knew how it had ended. He was not stupid. Wars had been fought and won with magic. Innocents had been killed and Kingdoms had been levelled at the hands of people with power, real power. Magic could be dark and dangerous, and fire was considered to be the darkest of all, despite what Luke said. Something deep and primal in Alec revolted at the idea of creating fire. The whole world existed without fire. The South Kingdom worked well enough without it. Fire was a disease, a madness that invaded cities, a terror that scorched forests until the trees were nothing but charred matchsticks. 

Luke’s gaze softened. “I know you love magic, Alec. I’ve seen the way you look at spells, and these writings you’ve done are bound to be near perfect.” He gestured towards the paper that Alec had covered with neat lettering, ideas for spells, small recitals and chants to test and adapt as he learned more. 

Alec shook his head. “Fire is different. I do love magic, I love the way it works, the way it feels alive, but I’m not even supposed to practice it. I’m not supposed to know about all of the good things it can do, let alone the bad. How would my father feel if he learned that I could create fire with magic, that I could combine the two things that he hates most in this world?” 

“Well he’d hardly lock his own son up and throw away the key now, would he?” Luke snorted, although Alec wasn’t sure. His father had been unpredictable in the past. “And you’ll forgive me for saying so, but I don’t think you know half as much as you think you do about your father, or what he hates.” 

“And you do?” Alec waited, but no answer seemed forthcoming. Luke hummed something soft and low as he sliced up a clump of ginger with a dexterity and swiftness that always surprised Alec. 

“Pass me the Baneswood.” 

Luke clicked his fingers impatiently and several sparks flew from his thumb. Alec dodged them easily and they settled on the floor, miniscule blue orbs that wobbled and smoked. Luke stamped on them without looking, despite his bare feet. There was a slight sizzling sound as the orbs were smothered.

“You’re going to blow this place apart one day, if you’re not more careful. What are you making?” Alec asked, sifting through the piles of twined herbs and plants. The Baneswood was a long, thin vine with leaves the colour of emeralds. Luke snatched it off of him and attacked it with a herb knife. “Another healing potion?” 

A few weeks ago, a section of the Kingdom Wall had randomly collapsed, trapping fourteen sentries and a few passing villagers beneath the rubble and debris. The Wall was several layers thick, and only the first few layers had collapsed, so it was still impossible to look through the Wall, but the damage had been significant nonetheless. 

The Painted Priests had easily repaired the hole, with the help of the repairman. Luke, on the other hand, whose official job was to make medicines for the Painted Priests, had been overwhelmed with demands for poultices and ointments, anything to help the injured civilians. He had spent the last few weeks in a flurry of cooking and concocting, grumbling over how ridiculous it was not to be able to use magic to heal them. 

“The Painted Priests tell me I’ve done more than enough, I think they expect me to keel over any minute,” Luke snapped irately, stirring his mixture viciously. “They’re probably hoping for it too, deep down. I won’t collapse the minute I put my old bones to work, and those people need my help. I won’t leave anyone hurt if I can help it.” 

Luke wasn’t old, but he wore a glamour, at times, that deepened the lines around his eyes and his mouth, a glamour that shrouded him in years. Alec didn’t know why. 

“What do you need me to do?” 

Luke brandished a piece of chopped Baneswood at Alec, who stepped back hastily in alarm. “I need you to take that piece of paper home with you and study it. Understanding fire is a handful, but it’ll be worth it, if you can get past your fear. It might save your life, one day.”

*

Icy winds whipped the soft blizzard into a frenzy, draping a lace veil over the Sliproads. The sky was a thick haze of silver and wool, soft and dense. Alec’s boots sunk in the muddy slush as he stomped his way up the narrow road, walking with his hand partially over his eyes to protect them from the sting of the wind. 

He was so busy battling against the weather that he didn’t notice the figure up ahead, half-hidden in alcove off to the side. A hand reached out and grasped his wrist, yanking him sideways into the adjoining alley. He slipped on the frozen walkway and collided hard with the wall, bumping into Jace, who grinned at him. 

“Lovely weather we’re having. You should pay more attention to where you’re going, Your Highness. Anyone could grab you.”

“Anyone just did,” Alec said, rolling his eyes and pulling his hand out of Jace’s grip. “And I’ve told you not to call me that a thousand times. What are you doing here?” 

“Waiting for you. What did Luke have to say, then?”

“Nothing interesting,” Alec said, the lie burning his tongue. It was always on the tip of his tongue, to spill his secrets, to tell everyone everything he had kept hidden for the past few years. His secrets – lessons and magic and fire – had grown heavy over the years, heavy enough that he began to feel it in his chest when he walked, as though it was all lodged behind his ribs. He looked into his best friends’ eyes and wanted to tell him everything. 

“Be mysterious, if you like.” Jace shrugged. “I’ll tell you what I’ve been thinking about, instead, since that’s bound to be ten times more interesting anyway. But not here. You look whiter than a wraith, and I can’t exactly have a conversation with you if your mouth is frozen shut. How would you laugh at my jokes?”

Alec scoffed, but Jace paid him no attention. He grinned, carefree, and stepped back out into the wind. He tossed something shiny up in the air and caught it, and then he did it again and again. He was always fiddling with bits of metal and steel and bolts that he absently pocketed when he was working.

“Why does it have to be so cold all the time?” Alec muttered to himself, and then he stepped back out into the wind. “Anyway, what did you want to talk about? I thought you had work today.”

“The boss said he had something to discuss with Luke, so we’re going to finish the job next week,” Jace said, scratching his nose with the end of the shiny thing. “It’s not a big deal, though. It’s just another water system. I can dismantle those things in my sleep if I want to.”

“You’re so modest,” Alec said drily. 

“One of my many charming qualities.” 

Alec rolled his eyes. Jace seemed to hesitate for a second, and then continued, with light, airy casualness that had to be fake, “I heard a rumour today. About the Trader’s Market.” 

Alec glanced at him, but didn’t reply. 

“I heard a Priest talking about it, on the way over here,” Jace said. “He said that the King had made a choice regarding the raiders. He said that the Trader’s Market was close to being cancelled. Is that true?” 

Alec still didn’t reply. 

“Alec? Come on, it’s me. You can tell me.” 

“I don’t know.” Alec sighed. “I walked into the council room the other day and they were discussing it, the King and the Priests. They went quiet when they spotted me, though, so I’m not sure what was decided. I can’t see how it would work – we rely on the Trader’s Market. If they cancelled it, half the Kingdom would starve within a few months.”

“This is good though,” Jace said, sounding unnecessarily excited. “It sounds like they’ve actually got a plan in place! Maybe not much of one, but at least it’s a start. And it’s better than the King just sitting on his—”

Jace paused. Alec glared at him. 

“They haven’t cancelled it,” he said sharply. “They can’t have cancelled it. I’m sure it was just a suggestion. It’s still taking place.” 

Jace made a sound of discontent, but held his palms up in mock surrender and then shoved them back in his worn pockets. His clothes were falling apart, worn through from hard work and cruel weather. Alec could see his fingertips through the holes in his pockets, and felt a familiar flash of self-consciousness in his comfortable clothes. He automatically folded in on himself, hunching his shoulders a little. 

Jace noticed. His eyes narrowed and he started to walk faster, his feet sure on the Sliproads. Alec followed after him hurriedly, although it took every ounce of his concentration not to lose his footing. The ground was slick with a deadly layer of ice that lay obscured beneath the snow. 

“I know he’s your father, but even you can’t deny that he’s a bad King,” Jace said, kicking moodily at a clump of ice. “He’s supposed to look after the Kingdom, not look at it from behind a window. Lately, he’s done nothing to suggest he even remembers that he’s King.”

“He’s not a bad King.” Alec straightened his spine. “You know what he’s done to keep us all safe.”

Jace snorted. “No, I don’t, and neither do you. Nobody does. Just because we got fed some story about how he saved the Kingdom from a big fiery death once upon a time doesn’t mean it’s true. Do you even remember how the story goes? The details? Nobody talks about it, do they?”

Alec arched an eyebrow. “Imagine that. It’s almost as if they don’t want to talk about potentially horrifying, painful memories. How strange.” 

“Anyway, even if it is true, it all happened years ago, Alec. There’s nothing out there to be afraid of anymore, except for the raiders, and he’s doing nothing about them! When’s the last time he held a council?” 

“The other day,” Alec said inaudibly, casting his eyes around for something that wasn’t Jace’s hard, accusing stare. Faded red brick stared back, partially obscured by swarms of brown peeling posters, emblazoned with the familiar blood-red uniforms that the sentries wore. The posters were pointed fingers and upturned noses, but Alec ignored them. Their message was not for him. 

He turned to find Jace still staring at him. 

“You know what I mean,” Jace said. “A council that includes the people, a council that we can actually take part in. It’s been at least a year since the last one, and we don’t even know why they were cancelled. You know, I can barely even remember what the King looks like.”

“Don’t be so dramatic,” Alec said, snorting uneasily. “You’ve seen him in the castle, when you visit me.”

He was being deliberately obtuse, something that Jace obviously picked up on, because he didn’t bother to answer him. They walked in stiff silence for a while. Alec could see the castle in the distance, a mass of grey stone and shining windows. The turrets were iced over, and the ivy that had crawled its way into every crack and crook glinted frostily. He turned his face to the window in the lower portion of the castle, and wondered if Robert, his father, was there now, staring wistfully at the sky. 

“He wants to leave,” Alec said quietly. Jace was right. His father didn’t leave the castle, hadn’t left in a long time, and Alec didn’t know why. He had grown deathly afraid of the outdoors as the years had slipped by. Sometimes, on his good days, the King would stand in the doorway to the courtyard and watch the sentries train. He would never set a foot outside, but Alec could tell he wanted to. Those were the good days. Alec didn’t like to think about the bad days. 

“Then, why doesn’t he?” Jace demanded, his eyes hooded and intense. “All he has to do is open the door. It’s not exactly difficult. I can even teach him if you like.” 

“He’s afraid,” Alec snapped. “There’s something wrong with his mind. Sometimes he doesn’t leave his room. He hardly eats, he won’t talk to me at all, and he ignores Izzy. Sometimes he can’t even look at us. There’s something wrong with him, and he’s been getting worse recently. It’s like he’s not the same person anymore.”

Jace pursed his lips. Alec could tell he wanted to say more on the subject, but his gaze washed over him once, twice, and he sighed harshly instead. He shook his head and moved a little faster. Alec was grateful for the quiet reprieve, but unfortunately, it didn’t last long, as was normal with either Jace or Izzy. 

“And then there are all the raids!” Jace said explosively, throwing his hands up in the air. 

“How long have you been holding this in?” Alec said incredulously, but Jace either didn’t hear him or had decided to ignore him. Probably the latter. 

“Those bastards break in almost every night,” Jace said, balling his hands into fists at his side. He was usually calm, almost lazy in his movements, but it only took on small amount of injustice to set him off, and then he was an explosion of movement, of ferocity. “They’ve been at it for almost three weeks now, and nothing’s been done. Just because nobody’s been hurt yet doesn’t mean it can go on being ignored. Half the Kingdom doesn’t sleep for fear of getting robbed. I’ve worked all week repairing houses, fixing water cooling systems…” 

“I know all of that,” Alec said softly, insistently. “I know all of that, and I’m sure my father does too, but one thing I don’t know, is your point.”

“My point,” Jace said, coming to an abrupt stop, “is that your father is doing nothing. Everyone is scared, Alec. People have started not leaving their houses in the day, let alone at night. They’re getting restless.” 

“Restless,” Alec repeated, suddenly nervous. Images of riots filled his mind, smashed windows and raised fists and loud, angry voices. “What do you mean, restless?” 

“They want to know what’s going on.” Jace ran a hand through his hair. There were flecks of snow settling in his soft golden hair. “Everyone wants to know what’s being done to drive them out. Everyone has questions.”

“Jace?” Alec caught his arm, tugging on his sleeve until he reluctantly turned to face him. His eyes were dark and unsure. “What kind of questions?” 

“Who are these raiders?” Jace asked, clenching and unclenching his fists. “How are they getting in? Where are they coming from? There isn’t supposed to be anyone out there, not anymore. This is the only habitable place this side of the North Mountains, so how have these raiders survived out there?”

“There are stragglers out there, like the Traders. Maybe they came down from past the North Mountains?” 

Jace snorted, his hair bouncing as he shook his head. “Across the dead sea? They’d have to be insane. Why come here anyway? It’s not like we’ve got much to steal, any of us, unless you consider ice a profitable product. I should know.” 

“If you’re going to keep shooting down my suggestions then what’s the point in asking me questions?” 

“To get you to think about it,” Jace said. “I know you like to follow orders, Alec, but these are your questions as much as mine, you just don’t want to admit it. Nobody talks around here. Nobody asks anything. It’s like they’re under some kind of spell.” 

“Jace,” Alec hissed, pulling him sideways. Jace humoured him, going willingly even though he had a wiry sort of strength and could easily have held his ground if he wanted to be difficult. He grinned widely at him as he leaned against the wall, one foot propped up against the stone, hands deep in his pockets. 

Alec cast an eye about, searching for any signs of life. A frost-fox was nosing curiously at a pile of trash, the sharp lines of its ribs sticking out starkly against its white fur, but other than that, the Sliproads were seemingly deserted, quiet. Even their footprints had begun to disappear beneath a new layer of fresh powder, as if they had never been there. 

Nobody was about, but that didn’t mean that nobody was listening.

Alec turned back to Jace and narrowed his eyes at his smirk. 

“You know you’re not supposed to talk about spells and magic so casually,” he hissed. “It’s a serious issue. What if someone heard you?”

“It was a joke,” Jace said, rolling his eyes. “Just like that law is. There isn’t even anyone around who knows how to use magic anymore. The knowledge is long since gone, so what’s the point in enforcing the law? Talking about it isn’t going to bring it back.”

Alec kept his face carefully blank. He had become adept at keeping this secret. “That doesn’t mean you should joke about it,” he said, punching him in the arm lightly. “You never know who could be listening.” 

“You are quite right, Your Highness.” 

Jace’s shoulders tensed up immediately, and Alec whipped around, his cloak billowing around him like curtains on a windy day.

A sentry stood to their left, as though summoned there by Alec’s anxiousness. His red uniform was like a vivid swathe of spilled blood, stark and bright against a backdrop of silver snow. Brass buttons on his boots gleamed almost as brightly as the hungry glint in his eye. Alec didn’t know how they hadn’t seen him sooner. 

“May I help you?” Alec asked stiffly. 

Sentries were hand-picked by the Painted Priests, scooped up off the streets and plucked from over-crowded homes, the thieves and the muggers, the boys without a bed to lie in, the boys with desperation in their bones. The boys that wouldn’t be missed. 

The sentry smirked at him. Alec didn’t recognise him, but his vile grin was familiar; he had seen it pasted across the face of every other sentry he had had the displeasure of meeting. 

“Prince Alec, His Highness has asked me personally to escort you home. He was very concerned at how long you were taking.”

_Lie._ Priest Eli, who spent his time hovering beside the King with a sickly smile and locking himself up inside the old Council Room in the Castle, had an uncanny knack for telling where Alec and Izzy were. Izzy didn’t care, but Alec was going to be King one day. For the most part, he had to do as he was told. 

“I’m sure he was very concerned,” Alec said, with a fake, bright smile. “And it was very gracious of you to do so, but I’m afraid I shall have to decline. I already have an escort, you see.” 

Out of the corner of his eye, Alec saw Jace hunch over slightly as he tried to stifle his laughter. He always found it hilarious when Alec talked the way that his tutors desperately wanted him too. 

Blue lips thinned. “A common thief is hardly what I would call an escort.” 

“Luckily, I didn’t ask for your opinion,” Alec snapped. He had to bite his tongue against the stream of insults that threatened to flow forth, impatience frothing inside him.

“Alec,” Jace murmured, too low for the sentry to hear. “Go with him.” 

“Excuse me?” Alec whirled to face him, taken aback. Usually, Jace was the first to back him in these situations; he hated the sentries more than Alec did, although he knew it was for entirely different reasons. Alec hated them because of their attitude, their insolence. Jace hated them because they were a constant reminder of what was in store for him, if the Painted Priests got their hands on him. 

Alec didn’t like to hear about Jace stealing, so he turned a deaf ear to it when the topic came up, which it did, often. He knew that he only stole what he needed in order to survive. His apprenticeship only paid him a pittance, and he refused to accept anything that he viewed as charity. Alec wanted fiercely to protect him, but since Jace wouldn’t let him, he settled for letting him steal, as long as he didn’t cross the line. 

He wished he would just accept a room in the Castle, or even just some food, or some new clothes. Even his old clothes, stitched up and repaired, would be an improvement, but Jace steadfastly refused to let him help. 

“I’ll always be the last person to tell a Lightwood what to do,” said Jace with a grin. “Mostly because I value my life. But just go with him, and save yourself the trouble. Your father’s worried.” 

“Jace,” Alec protested. The word was partly a sigh. 

“Just go.” Jace pushed him gently in the direction of the sentry, who was beginning to shiver in his thin uniform. The boy’s jaw was clenched, but he managed a sort of triumphant grin when Alec moved toward him, right before his teeth began to chatter. 

“You are not common,” Alec called over his shoulder, reluctantly falling into step with the sentry, who set a quick pace. “And I expect to see you tomorrow, in time for the Traders Market.” 

“Bright and early,” Jace shouted, and Alec grinned. He stumbled on a piece of ice and righted himself quickly, but by the time he looked back, Jace was already gone, swallowed up by the snow. 

*

A soft thud tore Alec from his sleep. Disorientated, he peeled open his eyes and stared at the canopy above him. It was made of deep blue velvet, heavy and embroidered with small silver stars. He remembered being younger, afraid of the dark that closed in every evening. He had stared at the stars and counted them until his eyes eventually slipped closed. 

Another thud, like the sound of rotten fruit splatting against wood, ripped through the silence, and this time it was accompanied by a host of distant cheering. 

Alec blinked blearily in the direction of his window, where two round circles of snow greeted him. He huffed a laugh and stumbled out of bed, padding across the room on socked feet. Down in the courtyard, a gaggle of children paused in the act of launching another volley of snowballs. He poked his head out and waved, laughing to himself as the children shrieked and tripped over themselves, abandoning their snow forts in favour of sprinting through the open gates. Their ringleader remained in the courtyard, ruffling his gold hair and smirking shamelessly. 

“Why am I not surprised?” Alec huffed, rolling his eyes at Jace.

He left the window open, ignoring the brisk wind that blew through the room. The snowfall had lightened overnight, but the winding streets and roads were still sprinkled in a thick layer of frost; it looked as if someone had dipped the Kingdom in sugar. The lower town shone in the pale light of the mid-morning sun, bedecked in a gown of ice. Villagers bustled down the paths, but from his lofty height, they resembled nothing more than a swarm of black ants, going about their business. 

A few familiar knocks on the door distracted him. Alec closed the window with a sharp bang and called out for them to enter. 

Several servants filed inside, apologising for the intrusion even as they fanned out across the room. One maid, Lucia, moved to make the bed while Alec stood awkwardly by. No matter how many times Alec insisted that he could make his bed by himself, Lucia usually ignored him. She was quiet, and older than Alec by a fair few years, but she had a fierce glare that rivalled even Izzy’s, despite her small stature and mousy brown hair. 

Evelin and Drew, Alec’s other regular servants, were twins with straight black hair and matching sneers. They usually ignored Alec to some extent, but today they disappeared into the adjoining room without so much as a glance. 

“Don’t bother trying to talk to them. They’re really determined today. Drew almost drowned me in the bath.” 

Alec banged his elbow against the wall, swearing lowly in surprise. He glared at Izzy, who was leaning against the doorjamb with a smirk on her face. 

“Every morning. I wish you wouldn’t do that.” Alec sighed, rubbing his elbow, and Izzy swept into the room to kiss him lightly on the cheek. “Can’t you just announce yourself like a normal person? I hear knocking is back in fashion these days.” 

Izzy shrugged. “I’m not sorry. Apologising puts you—”

“Don’t say it!”

“—In a person’s debt!” Izzy finished. It was her favourite phrase, one that she had picked up from a Trader at the tender age of four, one that most people in the Kingdom had tired of hearing by the time she was four and a half. 

“You just had to say it,” Alec said, mostly amused. His elbow didn’t really hurt. 

“Besides, you should be used to me by now,” Izzy went on, as though Alec hadn’t spoken. She hopped up onto the dresser, perching lightly on the edge like a small bird and swinging her feet back and forth. It was moments like these that reminded Alec sharply of a younger Izzy, an Izzy that didn’t favour black fighting gear, an Izzy without the sharp wit that coated her tongue. 

She didn’t look young, not anymore. It was generally agreed by the Kingdom that Izzy had inherited their mother’s good looks. They had the same shaped face, the same dark, straight hair, the same fiery glint to the eye. 

There was only one picture of their mother in the Castle. It had been painted many moons ago by the resident artist, Old Branson. Even at the tremulous age of ninety-eight, his paper-thin hands never shook when they held a paintbrush. 

The portrait hung in the main hall of the Castle, edged with a delicate silver frame. Mayrse Lightwood stared out of the painting, her hands folded demurely in her lap. Despite her passive expression, her eyes were a rolling storm.

Those eyes stared at Alec now, waiting impatiently for him to speak. 

“I am used to you,” Alec said. “Just not at such an early hour. Normally, you’re still in bed now. And don’t swing your feet, you’ll dent my dresser.”

Izzy’s next kick was a little harder than the last. “It’s Trader’s Market. I’m not sleeping through any of it this time, and since you forgot to wake me up last time, I haven’t been to sleep yet. I want to make sure I don’t miss anything.”

Alec rolled his eyes. “It’s not my job to make sure you don’t spend all day in bed. You haven’t slept at all? That’s stupid and unhealthy, and you know it. You’re going to be exhausted all day.”

“That’s why I’m going to the Market now instead of later in the day,” Izzy explained, patting her pocket so that Alec could hear the jingle of bronze coins clashing together. “Don’t worry so much, big brother. I’ll be fine.”

Alec knew it was a mistake, but he brought it up anyway. “father won’t be pleased if you sleep the rest of the day away.”

Izzy curled her hands tightly together and glowered at her knees. “He won’t notice. You know he won’t notice, so stop lying for him.” Her voice was rigid and she had hunched in on herself, which was unlike Izzy. Alec bit his lip and then sighed before tactfully changing the subject. 

“I always like the Market in the evening,” he said, moving out of the way as Lucia rounded the bed, brandishing a pillow. Alec’s hands fluttered awkwardly in mid-air, eager to help but not wanting to get in the way. “It feels like something out of a story.”

Then he came to a sudden stop.

“Wait a minute,” he said shrewdly. “How the hell have you been getting bronze?”  
I  
zzy froze. Her hand drifted to her pocket. “None of your business.”

Alec arched an eyebrow and said drily, “I’m your brother, and I’m the eldest. Everything’s my business.”

Izzy rolled her eyes. “It’s just from odd jobs.”

Alec’s eyebrow climbed even further. 

“What?” Izzy demanded, abruptly annoyed. “I’m not the one doing anything wrong, or illegal.”

Alec took a step back, his breath hitching sharply. Dread curled in his gut like thick smoke. Had Izzy found out about the magic sessions? How? He had been so careful. 

Two years was a long time to keep a secret from everyone you loved, and as much as he hated having to do it, Alec understood that it was necessary, vital, even. He never did magic where people might see him, never took more from the world than he could return, and the only clue to his secret that he had ever taken home with him was the parchment displaying the fire spell, and that was still tucked snugly in his cloak pocket, hanging on the back of the door. 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Alec asked hoarsely. He tried to keep his tone as even as possible, but something must have shown in his face anyway, because Izzy gave him a strange look, as though she thought he was being odd. 

“I’m talking about Jace,” Izzy said. “He was caught pocketing pieces of the old water system up by Jenkin’s Temple the other day. His boss let him off with a warning.”

For a brief moment, Alec relaxed, sighing in relief. His secrets were still safe. Then his heart dropped as he registered Izzy’s words, and he stared at his sister in alarm. 

“What do you mean?”

“Jace? Best friend? Basically, our brother in everything but blood?” Izzy shot him a bemused look. “He was caught stealing, the usual, you know? What is with you today?

Alec sighed and rubbed a hand over his eyes. “Sorry, Iz. I’m just tired.”

“I’ll leave you to get ready, then.” Izzy hopped down off the dresser and strolled towards him to kiss his cheek again. She smirked at one of the maids, who blushed, and Alec rolled his eyes as she swept from the room, leaving the door to bang shut behind her. 

“Always know how to make an exit,” he muttered fondly. 

*

Jace was waiting for him in the courtyard. 

“Izzy sends her love,” Alec greeted him. The castle doors swung shut behind him with a sound like rocks grinding together. Jace stood at the bottom of the stone steps, beside the crumbling remains of a hastily-assembled snow-fort. Alec had no doubt that the flurry of snowballs hitting his window that morning had all been orchestrated by the smirking man standing in front of him, the boy that Alec considered his brother. 

A half-smile drifted across Jace’s face as he watched Alec fiddle awkwardly with the buttons on cloak, his gloves slopping on the glass. Jace’s hair was even wilder than usual, tousled by the cool breeze. 

“I doubt that,” Jace snorted. He was wearing his usual attire; a worn brown tunic and a pair of thin cotton trousers tucked into buckled boots. 

Jace flipped something across his fingers absent-mindedly. Alec couldn’t tell what it was and he wasn’t entirely sure that he wanted to know. It was likely to be either something Jace had stolen or something from his past (Alec hadn’t seen it before, but that didn’t mean anything when it came to Jace, who was a proud, secretive person) and Jace didn’t talk about either. 

“The last time I saw your darling sister,” Jace continued, oblivious to Alec’s perusal, “was when I was working on the Jenkins Temple. She challenged me to a duel and then kicked me in the shin when I refused before storming off. Always a pleasure to be around, that girl.”

“I don’t pretend to understand your relationship. And you aren’t exactly a bundle of delight yourself,” Alec said, and then he paused on the bottom step. “What happened to the Jenkins Temple?” 

There were seven Temples in the South Kingdom. Each one stood taller than thirty feet, with domed rooves and thick walls made of lapis lazuli. The Painted Priests had decorated them with gold etchings, letters from a language that Alec couldn’t read, and nonsensical pictures. They were strange, exquisite buildings, so different from the bland drabness that filled the streets of the South Kingdom. From the moment Alec had laid first eyes on the golden doors, he had wanted to sneak inside and swallow up all of their secrets. He had wanted to learn about them, and he still did. 

However, there was something about the Painted Priests that warned against asking questions. Only the sentries and the Priests themselves had ever set foot inside the Temples, and Alec had sadly resigned himself to being an outsider when it came to the Painted Priests and their grand homes. 

“One of the raiders found it,” Jace said grimly. “They haven’t attacked any Temples before now. Normally, they bypass them and go for the poorer, less protected homes. Either that or they’ve never seen the Temples before, and that’s why they haven’t attacked them.”

“They aren’t exactly easy to miss, though,” Alec pointed out. “You can see the tips of the rooves from anywhere in town.”

Jace shrugged. “Point taken. I wonder why they haven’t gone for the Temples before then. If there was anything worth stealing in this place, I’d bet my life that it’s in those Temples, and I’d know. I bet they keep all sorts of things hidden away in there. Gold? Treasure, maybe?”

Alec snorted, and then stepped down onto the courtyard, mindful of the icy cobblestones. Jace offered him his arm mockingly, and Alec shoved him away, only for Jace to bounce back with a grin on his face, sling an arm over Alec’s shoulders, and lead him out onto the main road. 

“I doubt it,” Alec said. “I expect they’re just full of beds for the sentries. And storage.” 

“Way to spoil all my hopes and dreams,” Jace said, rolling his eyes. “Anyway, we got called out the morning of the raid. This raider must have been a lot braver than his companions, but I don’t think it was planned. He launched an attack, broke off part of the wall with what looks like a shield. It was still lodged in the wall when we arrived, with bits of brick broken up around it. Jenkins was so mad, I think I saw steam coming out of his ears.”

“A shield?” Alec repeated sharply. “Why a shield? That doesn’t make any sense. That sounds like an act of rage, more than anything. What do you think?”

“I think that we aren’t supposed to ask questions,” Jace said loftily, the corner of his mouth twitching. 

“Don’t be obtuse on purpose, you manage it enough accidentally as it is,” Alec said, grinning. Jace adopted an affronted look and put a hand to his heart. 

“I’m wounded,” he said, deadpan. “This is it. This is the end of my story.”

“It wasn’t a very interesting one.” Alec patted his shoulder consolingly and walked the last few feet into the town square. 

The Trader’s Market began on the same day every year. On the second Sunday of the second month, carts rolled into the square and remained there for a full seven days, before leaving at dawn on the eighth day. Dawn was an impossible time to judge, since the sun was barely visible behind the Wall, but the Traders knew. The Traders always knew. They always arrived and left exactly on time, never a minute late, never a minute early. 

There was no telling exactly how the Traders gained access to the Kingdom, or how they left it; this was a secret that even Alec, as the crown prince, wasn’t privy to, one that people didn’t question because it was simpler to ignore it. Of course, the Traders didn’t just come by on Market Day. Stragglers would pass through at all times in the year with small things to sell, things that the Kingdom needed, on their way to and from camps that they had set up outside the Wall. 

Alec didn’t know about the camps for certain, but he could make an educated guess. He had eavesdropped, once, on a private conversation between King Robert and his advisors. _There are a few survivors out there,_ he recalled the advisor saying, _but rest assured, they won’t last long out there, not with the land dead and the sea silenced._ Alec had been young, only five years old, and Izzy had been even younger, but Alec would never forget what he had heard. 

He also wouldn’t forget the look of grief and regret on his father’s face. 

Someone brushed past him, and Alec jolted back to his surroundings to find Jace frowning at him. He looked away quickly. 

There was plenty to see. It was still early, and the Market was only just setting up. Large wooden carts were being wheeled across the square, the wheels squeaking on the cobbles until they came to a stop, parked in rough lines, their contents obscured by large swathes of cloth. Crates had been piled up beside the fountain in the middle of the square, spilling precious fruit onto the floor, and burlap sacks littered the ground, heaving with treasures. 

Simple stone lay beneath Alec’s boots. The ice that layered the ground had been cracked and crushed overnight by tireless sentries, and the square had been brushed free of snow. It clogged the side-alleys, melting reluctantly in piles. 

“Where do you think they get all their wares from?” Jace asked, eyeing a passing Trader with curiosity. The Trader, whose face was obscured by black fabric, turned his head to look at them, but kept ghosting forward slowly. 

“I expect they make them, or grow them,” Alec said, shrugging. “There must be some things out there that aren’t ruined, after all, or the Trader’s wouldn’t survive the year. What’s gotten into you lately? You’re very interrogatory, all of a sudden.” 

He watched a stall unfold a few metres away; an emerald green canopy protruded from the side of a cart, propped up with silver poles over a bare table. In the next hour, the table would begin to fill up with jewels, cloaks, spices, and all manner of strange odds and ornaments. The scent of spiced oranges filled the air, warm and citrusy, and Alec breathed in with a content smile, excitement churning in his stomach. There was a pleasant lack of bite to the wind, and the sky was clear. It was a good day for the Market. 

Barrels rolled past them, herded by several Trader’s with ragged, dirty sleeves. The Trader’s always dressed the same, in thick purple cloaks with large hoods that obscured their faces. Even if their hoods fell down or their sleeves rolled up, there was a layer of black fabric wrapped around their skin, a sort of undergarment that looked like it would get very hot very quickly. 

“How do they breathe in those things?” Alec muttered. 

“With their lungs, I imagine,” Jace said. 

Alec rolled his eyes, and then pulled them sideways, out of the path of a passing cart. The Trader pushing the cart hadn’t even looked at him, had barely even moved his head, and yet he had the strangest sensation of being stared at, being looked through. The hairs on the back of his neck began to prickle, and he shivered again. 

“You feeling alright?” Jace pressed his palm to Alec’s forehead, checking his temperature. “You’ve gone pale.”

“I’m always pale,” Alec countered, shaking his hand away. Jace gave him a dry look, eyebrows quirked in disbelief, but he didn’t press the matter. 

“I feel fine,” Alec promised him. “Let’s go and look around. Look, some of them have finished setting up already.”

They wandered around listlessly for a while, drinking in the busy atmosphere, until Jace came to a stop beside a stall and frowned. It held a dazzling array of weapons, each one decadently decorated with sparkling ornaments, little gems set into the handles. 

“How do they make this stuff?” Jace demanded. “It’s just not possible. If there’s all this material out there, all this life, then why aren’t we allowed to go outside the Kingdom Wall? And for another thing, how did they get in through the Wall?”

“Why would you want to go outside of the Wall?” Alec sighed in exasperation and ducked around the local seamstress. She was a willowy woman with a cloud of pale hair, and she smiled genteelly at them as they passed, holding a selction of multi-coloured cloth in her hands. Alec tried to smile back, but he could hear Jace following him, his light footsteps almost brushing against his heels, so it came out as a grimace. 

“I don’t know why you think I have the answers, either. I’m just as clueless as you are.” Frustration started to pool in his stomach. He whirled around so suddenly that Jace actually stumbled, almost bumping into him. He righted himself immediately and glanced around, as if to make sure that nobody had seen his moment of clumsiness. 

“So you’re happy to remain clueless?” Jace asked, eyeing him sceptically. “You’re fine with living the rest of your life in the dark?”

Alec dragged a hand over his face and stared at Jace. “I just don’t want to cause trouble, Jace.”

It wasn’t the real reason, just a part of the truth. Like Jace, Alec had questions; he probably had even more than Jace did, mountains of them, questions that he had accumulated all of his life, that had piled up in the corners of his mind where doubt and fear blossomed. 

Aside from not knowing where to get the answers from, he also didn’t feel safe wording them out loud. As soon as he thought about what he wanted to ask, a sense of foreboding washed over him, powerful enough to keep him quiet. 

Besides all of that, Alec had a secret, and magic was no small matter. 

Alec had known Jace since they were both six. They had met in the courtyard, on a day as cold as any other. Jace had been hunched up underneath a stone bench, curled up in rags, whilst Alec had been wrapped in warm, silky furs. He had coaxed Jace out, this wild-eyed boy with a mass of untamed hair, and he had brought him inside where it was warm and dry and safe. They had crawled under the dining room table and eaten, and Alec had held his hands to coax the blue tinge from his skin. Izzy had joined them a little while later, toddling under the table and plopping herself in Jace’s lap, much to his surprise and alarm. 

They had been best friends since, tied at the hip. Alec felt safe around him, and Jace, in turn, trusted him with his life. But magic was the one thing they hadn’t shared; Alec had kept magic from him. He had kept it from him for two years, greedily eating up every little fact and figure, learning and understanding the delicate shape of spells and how magic worked. He could feel it now, in the air and the ground, just waiting to be used. 

Asking questions would lead to answers he didn’t want to face. 

“Alec, you know I wouldn’t get you into trouble, right?” Jace asked seriously. “I just want to dig around a bit, see what we can find. I bet there are a few people around here that would talk if you paid them a pretty penny.”

Alec shook his head adamantly. They were in the middle of the square, surrounded by grumbling villagers and an increasing number of stalls. Alec grabbed Jace’s sleeve and tugged until he followed him, slipping down the space between two unmanned stalls. 

“Lower your voice,” he whispered. “I told you yesterday, you never know who could be listening.”

“I swear, if some smarmy sentry appears out of nowhere, I’m going to—” 

“Behave like a gentlemen and act accordingly?” Alec suggested drily, cutting over him. He folded his arms across his chest, uncomfortably aware that it made him look a bit arrogant. 

“Luckily, there’s nobody around, so we don’t have to watch me attempt to do that.” Jace sounded so relieved that Alec had to laugh. 

“You’re ridiculous,” Alec said fondly. Then he sighed. “Look, Jace, I know just as much about all of this as you do. I know the Traders speak our language well enough, and they seem to be adapted to our climate, so I doubt they go far.”

“But they still have to go somewhere,” Jace persisted. “You know as well as I do that there’s no life outside those walls.” He pointed wildly behind him, where the Wall of black stone rose up in the background, blocking out the view of everything beyond the South Kingdom. 

“Why are you arguing with me?” Alec demanded, forgetting to keep his voice low. “You’re the one who asked all these questions, you’re the one who wanted these answers. Why the hell do you keep shooting down everything I suggest?”

Jace placed a hand on his shoulder, his expression slightly unnerved. 

“I didn’t mean to push,” Jace said, sounding frustrated. “It’s just driving me mad, Alec. Ever since I helped repair Jenkins Temple, my head’s been full of questions, more than usual.”

Alec frowned. “Since Jenkins Temple?”

“Now, what do we have here?”

Alec almost yelled in surprise. Jace jumped, swearing colourfully, and scrambled forward to put himself between Alec and the cloaked figure standing at the end of their improvised alleyway. Alec could feel his heart racing. 

“I apologise.” The voice was decidedly female, sweet and soothing. “It was not my attention to startle you. 

Alec could detect a hint of an accent beneath the clear tone. Whomever it was spoke slowly, like she was savouring each word before she let it loose. 

“Well, that’s sort of what happens when you sneak up on people.” Jace tucked his hands in his pockets. Something metal clinked under his fingers, but Alec was too distracted to focus on it. It was probably just money for the market. 

“It’s fine,” Alec said, pushing Jace aside gently. He tensed up as if he was preparing to throw Alec to the side the second danger reared its head. Alec rolled his eyes and strode towards the Trader, who remained motionless. “We must have been causing a scene. That’s why we snuck down here in the first place, so we wouldn’t disturb anybody.”

The Trader inclined her head and placed one open palm against her heart, bowing her back slightly. Alec noted it in bemusement. 

“Is that your form of welcome?” Alec asked curiously, before he could stop himself. He felt himself grow warm with embarrassment; the Traders were secretive people, and it was generally considered rude to comment on their customs and appearances. 

The Trader’s laugh was rich and bright. The sound flooded through him, and Alec sighed peacefully. It was as if the sound has chased any lingering tension from his body. He went boneless and swayed a little drunkenly, a small, relaxed smile tugging at his lips. It was like magic. 

“There is no need to look so horrified, sweet one,” said the Trader, with amusement. “Questions are not a wickedness, after all.”

“That depends on who’s asking them,” Alec muttered, glancing back at Jace, who smirked unrepentantly.

The Trader stepped sideways, beckoning with her fingers, and then she disappeared into the stall to their left. Alec cast a glance at Jace, who shrugged unhelpfully. 

“She doesn’t seem dangerous,” Jace offered, although his stare remained suspicious. “A bit strange, maybe, but not dangerous.”

Alec’s curiosity got the better of him. He reached the end of their little alleyway and stopped, ducking into the left stall, which was specked with flakes of snow. The first snowfall of the day had started without them noticing, probably because they had been too invested in their argument. Jace followed him in, grumbling under his breath. 

The stall was made up of walls of thick, heavy, material, the colour of sparkling rubies. They had been draped over poles of polished oak and fixed in place with coils of golden rope and shining clasps. In the centre of the tent stood a table, which groaned under the weight of hundreds of glittering charms and peculiar beaded necklaces. Roughly-hewn wooden bowls littered the table, each one housing sparkling jewels and gems that glinted strangely, bits of misshapen crystal and coins, too, bent and broken. The coins looked foreign, stamped with unusual crests that Alec didn’t recognise. 

Despite the chill air and the fresh snow, the space beneath the canopy was hot. Alec had never felt heat like this before, not even in the middle of the night, surrounded by comfortable blankets. This was an immediate heat, one that covered him from heat to toe like a shroud. 

Jace swore. “Anyone would think you’d lit a fire in here.”

“Indeed,” the Trader agreed. “Although, fires are not quite legal here, are they?”

There was a slight pause, where Alec peered into the darkness beneath the purple hood, and then Jace said, “It’s more like they’re entirely illegal and punishable by death, so if you’re hiding one underneath your hood, you might want to put it out quickly.”

Alec stamped down hard on Jace’s foot. 

“I’m sorry for any offense caused,” Alec said, as Jace cursed and clutched his toes. “His mouth often works without his brain’s permission.”

The Trader laughed again. “There is no offense caused, sweet one. Your friend is bold, yes? Still, I do not hide a fire beneath my hood, unless you count a fiery passion for my work.”

“Your work?” Alec repeated, bemused. The Trader swept a hand over the table in front of her, and it was only then that Alec felt his eyes drawn to the trinkets on the table, as if he hadn’t been allowed to look until the Trader had told him to. He stared for a second, unsure of what he was seeing, and then gasped in realisation. 

“What?” Jace asked, stepping closer. “What is it?”

The heat was dizzying enough that Alec could almost have brushed it off as a hallucination of sorts, but deep down, he knew what he saw to be real. The table was laden with amulets; magical charms of great power. Alec had spent the better part of a week reading Luke’s notes on amulets. They were incredibly difficult to make and required an immense amount of energy and concentration to use, especially if the wearer was not the creator. 

“They’re, um, necklaces,” Alec stuttered, unable to think of a lie. Jace snorted, obviously not fooled, but didn’t say anything. 

“These are lucky charms, one might say,” the Trader said, her smooth voice settling Alec’s nerves. “Depending on your need, they will lend guidance and strength. Think of them as helping hands.”

“Lucky charms,” Jace repeated. His voice was impossibly dry. 

Alec ran a cautious finger over the nearest charm. It was cool to the touch, a lump of crystal contained within a thin band of silver, hanging from a silver chain. He moved to the next one, fingertips barely skimming the surface, and heard Jace say something about checking out the weapons stall. There was the sound of the canopy moving, and Alec glanced around belatedly, but Jace was gone. 

His gaze wasn’t swayed for long; it drifted back to the charm beneath his hand. 

It was a flat gold circle that hung from a thick rust-red chain. The circle itself was thin and inlaid with three bright gems, each the colour of emeralds that shone and flickered despite the darkness of the tent. Alec looped a finger through the chain and lifted the charm up, regarding it curiously at eye-level. 

The Trader remained unmoving, hidden in the shadow behind her stall. It made Alec nervous. He prided himself on reading people easily, learning their character through their face and body language, but the Traders hid their body and their faces behind swathes of cotton. He couldn’t see their eyes. 

“Would you like that charm?” inquired the Trader. Alec startled a little, having grown used to the quiet of the tent and the expressionless figure that owned it. 

“We both know that these aren’t just charms.”

The Trader shrugged. Alec watched her for a moment, but the woman seemed unconcerned by his quiet accusation. 

“It’s certainly pretty,” Alec admitted. “What does it do?”

The Trader shrugged again. Alec lowered the charm, fixing the woman with a baffled look, but the Trader did not react. 

“You don’t know? How do you expect to sell your own stock if you can’t tell your customers anything about it?” He lowered his voice to a whisper and said, “How can you trust magical wares if you don’t know what they do?”

The Trader chuckled, and once again, Alec felt his knees buckle as a wave of calm washed over him. That must be magic, he thought dizzily. It felt like magic, at a base level, but beyond the familiar pop and fizz in his blood, there was something very different about it. It didn’t feel as natural as the magic Alec as familiar with. 

“If my charms carry any qualities, they keep them hidden from me,” the Trader informed him, leaning closer over the table. “As you said, we both know that these are not just lucky charms, but that does not mean that I am responsible for their creation. If you know so much about these amulets, then you know that they require energy and intent. The energy is important, but the intent gives the charm direction, and the only intent I have is to sell my wares.”

Alec let the charm slip through his fingers. It landed with a small clunk in a bowl, and several coins spilled over the sides, clattering onto the table top. 

“You intend to sell potentially dangerous amulets to my people without knowing anything about them?” Alec demanded furiously. 

“Your people?” The Trader leaned back a little. Alec had the odd sense that he was being examined. He imagined a pair of dark eyes behind that purple hood, scanning him. The hood slipped a little as the woman regarded him curiously, and Alec caught a glimpse of dark hair before the Trader righted the material. 

“Your people,” the Trader said softly. “You must be a member of the royal family, then. You’re quite obviously not Isabelle, so that must make you Alexander.”

Alec nodded sharply, still mad. 

“And you know about magic? Interesting.” 

Alec stopped breathing. The air seemed to teem with danger, with threat. “I have to go. I have to go right now. My friend, he’ll be waiting for me.”

He backed away swiftly, hand outstretched to pull back the curtain of fabric. He felt sick with fear, and his headache had returned, and there was this painful feeling in his chest. If he could just get outside, he reasoned, he would feel better. If he could just get away from this Trader, he would be safe. 

Alec didn’t turn around when the Trader called his name, but he didn’t move any further away either. The Trader made a noise under her breath, something unintelligible that sounded like it could be a word in another language. The Traders did seem to be made up of similar people – it wouldn’t be surprising to find that they spoke their own tongue. 

“Please,” the Trader said, from a short way behind Alec. A hand came up to grasp lightly at his shoulder. Alec tensed up automatically and behind him, the Trader let out a deep sigh. She sounded inexplicably sad, almost grieved, which didn’t make any sense. 

Something heavy fell into Alec’s cloak pocket. Had the fire spell still been in there, it would have been crushed, but luckily, Alec had moved it to a secret pocket in the lining of his cloak that morning, before he met Jace. 

“Your secret is safe with me. Take this,” the Trader said quietly. “And may it guide you.”

Alec didn’t need to look to know that there was an amulet in his pocket, the one he had dropped a moment ago. The Trader dropped her hand away and Alec unfroze, moving swiftly towards the edge of the large curtain. He swept it aside and murmured his gratitude before exiting the stall. 

The cold hair hit him immediately, erasing whatever warmth he had been feeling. Alec breathed in deeply. Snow was falling fast and thick, and the sky had darkened considerably. He had no idea how long he had been in there, but it felt like hours rather than minutes, and the sky reflected that. The Market had picked up in his absence; villagers were drifting back and forth between the stalls, chattering quietly to each other. Soft laughter lit up the corners of the square and the place was bathed in the light from the dying sun. 

A whole day had passed in a matter of moments. 

Alec could not quite appreciate the beauty, or the wonder of it all. He felt sick to his stomach, and his head was still throbbing with pain – there had been too many questions today. He couldn’t think properly; he didn’t want to think at all. 

He wished Jace was here, or Izzy. 

As if summoned by thought, Jace shouldered his way through the crowd of people in front of him. He elbowed one lady in the side, and winced as she swung her bag at him. Alec wanted to laugh, but he felt exhausted. It must have shown because Jace’s smile dimmed, like a cloud passing in front of the moon.

“What’s wrong? I haven’t seen you since I left you with that woman,” Jace said, pulling him away from the crowd and into the shade of a stall that sold some kind of meat. It smelled disgusting, and didn’t help his sickness. 

“I feel ill.” He shook his head. “I haven’t eaten, that might be it.”

“C’mon,” Jace said, frowning a little. “I’ll walk you back to the Castle. It’s almost time for dinner anyway, so you can eat then.”

He threw an arm over Alec’s shoulder, and Alec smiled gratefully at him. The further they moved from the Market, the better he felt. He glanced back once, in search of the Trader and her little stall of trinkets, but the crowd was too thick. He sighed, and let Jace lead him home. 

The amulet in his pocket weighed next to nothing, but Alec could still feel it there, silent and heavy and, somehow, _waiting_.

*

“You should eat a little more than that, Father,” Alec urged. His own plate sat in front of him, full to the brim with tough, cold meat and shredded Corsal leaves. Alec knew he should take his own advice, but his stomach still hadn’t settled since wandering out of the Trader’s Market earlier that day. Jace had led him to the doors and watched him enter the Castle with a worried frown on his face. 

King Robert hummed absently, but made no move to pick up his knife and fork. Alec sighed. It was the same every evening; Alec would prod and poke his father towards eating something small, at least, whilst trying to ignore the wistful sadness that lingered in his eyes as he stared out of the window. 

Izzy no longer came to dinner. She took all her meals in her rooms. 

“Just a mouthful, Father,” Alec coaxed, pushing his food around his plate. “You have to keep your strength up if you want to put the guards through their paces tomorrow.”

It was an old joke, dredging back to the days when King Robert grandly sparred with the young guards in the courtyard every morning, the brisk wind whipping his skin red. There would be a ferocious glint in his eye regardless of the weather, and nobody doubted that this was the King the Kingdom needed. The joke became less and less funny with each passing day, as the King became more and more reserved, but Alec stubbornly clung to it. He clung to everything that gave him even the slightest bit of hope that, one day, the old King would resurface.

King Robert watched the window, but his eyes were elsewhere. Alec couldn’t blame Izzy for hating mealtimes, or any other time when she had to be in their father’s presence. It was like attempting to speak to a doll or a toy, something with clockwork insides and no heart to speak of. A mechanical man. Sometimes, Alec wished he could eat in his room too, but he couldn’t make himself do it. He had never seen eye to eye with his father, but you didn’t give up on family, not if you could help it. 

The dining room doors slid open silently. Lucia walked in, grasping a silver tray in her dainty hands. She nodded to Alec with a wan smile and then tutted as she came to a stop beside the King, where she began to pile his uneaten food onto the tray. 

“I’ll bring him something later,” Lucia promised him. “He usually eats before he goes to sleep at night.”

She swept out of the room before Alec could thank her. He was grateful for all the maid’s help, even if he found it slightly weird that his maid was also the King’s maid. Still, it wasn’t as if he could be picky anymore. Not many people would wait on the mad old King. 

Jace was right, he thought, as he miserably put down his fork. The King wasn’t a real King, not anymore. 

A flicker of something silver over near the window drew his attention. The windows in the dining room were tall, magnificent arches of glass. They were stained red and blue, with splashes of gold and sunset orange. When the snow fell, it packed itself against the windows and turned the colours bright and shining. They looked beautiful. 

They looked no less beautiful in pieces. 

Alec yelled and stood up, his chair falling back and falling with a muffled bang on the thick carpet. The window hadn’t just broken, it had imploded; thousands of jagged pieces of coloured glass showered over the dining room table, landing with a tinkling sound that Alec usually associated with hail against the rooves. 

Screams drifted in through the broken window, screams from the square, shouts of confusion and fear that had previously been blocked out by the glass. One by one, the other windows burst like popped balloons, spilling all over the carpet. Bits of glass landed in his cup and in King Robert’s hair. King Robert stood up shakily, having thrown himself to the floor when the glass broke. Alec watched as his father’s face paled with each passing second, his terrified gaze flicking from the ruined dinner to the dark slip of sky visible through the nearest window. 

A grapple hooked itself over the edge of the window, metal claws clinging to the wooden pane. Alec swore and fumbled at the table, fingers grasping blindly at a fork, which he held out in front of him like it could possibly protect him. 

“What do we do?” Alec demanded. 

King Robert seemed to shrink on himself, moaning. His breathing was quick and strained. He looked deathly afraid. Guards were beginning to pour into the room, spears held aloft as they circled the King, fixing their stern gazes on the windows. Alec was reluctant to move away, but one guard shoved him backwards away from the table. 

“Run.” The King’s voice quivered. He wasn’t looking at him, but Alec nodded anyway, clutching his fork. “Hide, both of you.”

His father caught his gaze just as the last window smashed. Alec wanted to stay. He wanted to stand by his father’s side and fight against whatever had invaded their Kingdom. But there was so much fear in that expression, and Alec didn’t know who it was for. 

He ran. 

He ran fast and hard, leaving the screams and shouts behind him. He had grown up here; he knew every secret passage, every broken floorboard and creaking step. Izzy’s room was near his, up in the West Tower, and it was a route that he had travelled often. Their rooms were separated by a single staircase, which climbed up into the top of the tower. As he skidded to a stop at the bottom of the staircase, he heard Izzy shout out. 

Alec froze, breathing hard. He crept closer to Izzy’s door. It was painted somewhat crudely with pictures of longswords and shining spears and knights that galloped along the bottom on horses. Their tutor had leant them one of the only remaining storybooks in the Kingdom when they were children, and had regretted it immediately as pictures began to appear all over the Castle. 

There was a scuffling sound from behind the door. Alec didn’t hesitate; he took a deep breath and threw himself at the double doors. 

The doors slammed open with a loud crash, hitting the walls. Izzy let out a strangled scream and sat up in bed, a dark figure in a dark room. Alec stood frozen in the doorway, scanning the shadows. There was nobody else there. With a sigh of relief, Alec raced towards his sister, pulling her up and out of bed. 

“Alec?” Izzy croaked out. “Is that you?”

“Yeah, it’s me.” Alec was so relieved that no one else was there, that he barely stopped to wonder why Izzy had sounded so distressed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you, but we have to move. There’s no time to explain, just get your shoes on.”

“What’s going on?” Izzy demanded hoarsely. 

“A raid, I think,” Alec said shortly. “We have to get out of the castle. Father wants us to hide until it’s over.”

“They came to the castle?” Izzy sounded odd. Alec was too busy finding her shoes to pay attention. He fished about in the bottom of Izzy’s wardrobe, amongst the crumpled bits of paper and ripped leather pockets, and pulled out a pair of boots. He whipped Izzy’s cloak off the hanger and bundled her into it. His own cloak was still wrapped around his shoulders to keep the chill out. 

“In through the dining room windows,” Alec replied. “Come on, we have to go.”

They crept quietly through the Castle, both on edge. The first floor was completely deserted. Alec drew them both into the shadows as they came closer to the dining room, but the doors were shut tight and there was nothing but ominous silence from behind them. Alec swallowed past the lump in his throat; he felt fearful and queasy all at once, not knowing what had become of the people inside. 

“Maybe the guards caught the raiders,” Izzy whispered in his ear. “Maybe it’s over.”

“Maybe,” Alec agreed, but he didn’t believe it. “We should hide anyway.”

After a few breathless minutes, they reached the doors to the courtyard and spilled out into the silvery moonlight. Alec had never been out at night before. He knew that Izzy snuck out often, but he didn’t see the appeal. When darkness fell in the South Kingdom, it fell hard and fast, and there was no light to guide anyone. Most people ended their days completely at sundown. 

They stood in darkness on the front steps of the Castle. There were no lamps, no flames to brighten their way. To the left, the Sliproads stretched out in front of them like a winding ribbon of treacherous snow and ice. To the right was the path to the square, where Alec could still hear screaming. 

Flailing a hand behind him until he caught hold of Izzy’s hand, Alec laced their fingers together tightly and marched forward towards the Sliproads. There was no time to be careful. He slipped and slid his way down the back alleys, grazing against the walls. Muffled shouts and screams came from behind them. He heard the song of swords hitting swords and his heart clenched in fear. His people were not soldiers. 

“We need to get to the Wall,” Izzy whispered in his ear. Alec jumped and whirled around, his boots slipping on the ice. Izzy stumbled into him, and they both stopped, breathing quickly. 

“There’s no time to waste,” Izzy said. “Come on, I know where we need to go.”

“What are you talking about?” Alec hissed. “We were told to hide.”

Izzy huffed and began to move, walking faster than Alec had dared to. They were almost at a run when Alec put a hand out in front of his face. He felt as if something were about to creep up out of the darkness and slam into him, but there was also something deadly at his heels, and he couldn’t stop. 

“Where are we going?”

“The old forge,” Izzy said over her shoulder. 

“We can’t hide there,” Alec insisted. “It’s falling apart. It was there before the damn Kingdom was built, and nobody’s been inside in years. It’s not safe.”

“It isn’t safe out here, either,” Izzy pointed out. “And besides, who said anything about hiding?”

Izzy took a sharp turn left. Alec could vaguely see the outlines of several metal staircases, the kind that lead out the back of the houses. Surprisingly, there were no noises in this area; the raid must not have reached this part of the Kingdom yet. 

“If we’re not hiding, then what are we doing?”

“Escaping,” Izzy said. “Now be quiet, I can’t hear where we are.”

Nothing that Izzy was saying made sense, but Alec rolled his eyes and kept quiet anyway. The screams faded with every step they took into the dark. Izzy pulled him along for minutes more, slipping in and out of alleyways. When she came to an abrupt stop, Alec collided with her back. 

“Watch where you’re going,” Izzy hissed, knocking Alec away with her elbow. 

“That’s a bit difficult to do,” Alec said through gritted teeth. “Considering it’s the middle of the night and I can’t see anything. Where are we?”

“We’re by the Wall, near the old forge,” Izzy said. 

Alec shivered. “This still doesn’t feel right. It feels like we’re being watched.”

Izzy paid him no mind. Alec heard the squelch of mud as Izzy moved away from him, muttering under her breath as she searched for something. 

“It’s over here,” Izzy whispered. There was a scraping sound, and then a thud, as though something heavy had fallen to the floor. Alec pulled his cloak tightly around him and moved towards the noise. His heart was beating quickly, hammering on the inside of his ribs. There was definitely something wrong about all of this. 

“Through here,” Izzy murmured. Alec squinted, but he couldn’t see her. A cloud had swallowed the moon, taking away their only source of light. There was a scuffling sound, and then Izzy let out a small mewl of surprise. 

“What happened?” Alec asked sharply. “Did you fall?”

Silence was his only reply. 

Hesitantly, Alec made his way forward. Mud clung to his boots, and he grimaced at the sticky, grounding feeling. He stretched out one hand until he felt something cold and hard. It was a wall of some sorts. The old forge, he guessed, running his hands over the stone. 

And yet. 

“This isn’t right,” Alec muttered, fear flooding through him in an icy wave. He gripped at the wall. It didn’t seem like normal stone, like the crumbling remains of a ruined forge. It was unnaturally warm and he could feel something inside of it itching to get out, something that made the air around him spark and crackle. It was as if the wall were pumped full of magic. 

He was about to call out for Izzy again when a hand wrapped around his wrist. He jumped, surprised, and then released a breath of relief. 

“You’re okay,” he said, and then the hand tightened painfully, yanking him forward harshly. 

Crying out in surprise, Alec reached blindly into the dark with his free hand. His knees hit jagged stone and a gust of bizarrely warm air hit him as the hand continued to pull him unrelentingly forward, through what must have been a small gap in the forge wall. He hissed in pain as the edges of the wall scraped against his shoulders and legs, drawing blood. 

Another hand slapped across his mouth, silencing him, and he was pulled through the wall. 

His feet landed on something so soft that his boots sunk several inches, softer even than the freshest snow. The ground seemed to shift, like it was making room for him. He had never felt anything like it before. 

There were hands on him, and no matter how hard he cursed and elbowed and wriggled, it made no difference. He was hauled upright, and something snapped around his wrists, holding them together around his back. It was tight enough that his shoulder blades ached, but he was more concerned about the hand covering his mouth, the nails digging into his skin. He could smell dirt and something stronger – metallic and bitter, like copper. Blood. 

Something flickered to life in front of him. It was a bright, white light, unlike any he had ever seen before. It was as though a piece of the bright sky had been torn from its home and brought down to earth. He stared, uncomprehending, as the light wavered mesmerizingly before it stilled, solidifying into a perfect sphere. He blinked blearily, slowly adjusting to the sight of something so relentlessly bright. 

Izzy was there, just a few feet from where Alec stood. A man had his arms around her, holding her still. The light illuminated the dirt streaking Izzy’s face, and the burning anger in her eyes. 

“Who sent you?” Izzy snapped. Blood was beading on her wrists. Her hands had been shackled together with thin black wires, the same ones that bit into Alec’s skin. The man holding her was lithe and lean, with an impassive stare. There was a knife at Izzy's throat, but Alec knew his sister. She was just waiting for an opening. 

“I asked you a question!” Izzy shouted. 

For a moment, Alec thought that Izzy had hit her head. She wasn’t talking to the man behind her, or to the person holding Alec in place. She had barely glanced in Alec’s direction. Instead, she was focused on the light. 

Confused and dazed, Alec followed his sister’s gaze, eyes widening in amazement. The orb of light dangled from the end of a silver chain, which hung around the neck of a tall figure. 

The figure was a man. He was dressed in black woollen clothes and a heavy grey cloak made of thick material. The hood of his cloak was drawn back to reveal bronze skin and dark eyes. His hair looked bruised in the moonlight. A thin scar painted the length of his left cheek, shadowing the cheekbone and coming to a puckered end at the corner of his lip. He stood extremely still, towering over them all, a splash of oil against a haze of silver. 

“I don’t owe you a reply, little one. But since you asked so nicely, I’ll tell you that we came on the King’s orders,” the man drawled. He dug into the folds of his cloak and withdrew a long, shining dagger. There was a sword tucked into the leather belt wrapped around his waist, and the dagger looked more ceremonial, but he handled it well, twirling it with a practiced ease. 

Alec cut his eyes sideways to find his confusion mirrored in Izzy’s eyes. 

“Why would King Robert order you to attack his own Kingdom?” Alec asked. The words came out muffled. His captor made a disgusted noise and removed their hand, leaving Alec free to take a deep breath. He repeated his question, careful to keep his face blank. There was a chance, however small, that these three were on their side and just didn’t know it yet. 

The man made a derisive noise, his voice heavy with disgust. “Not that stuffy old coward. Do you honestly think we’d take orders from a puppet like him?”

Rage curled within Alec. 

“He is _not_ a coward!” 

His voice settled in the silence, echoing angrily. The man stiffened. In a split second, his dagger spun through the air in a wide arc, the light of the moon reflecting off the curved surface. It came to a halt at Alec’s throat. 

Izzy stopped struggling immediately, going rigid in her captor’s arms. Alec felt a numbing fear spread through him. 

“You’re very loyal,” the man said. There was an undercurrent of curiosity in his voice, but otherwise he seemed calm. It was that calmness that unnerved Alec, far more than the dagger did. “What are your names, you and your companion there?”

He was almost too calm. Alec was used to kinetic people; Jace, who was always laughing, always taking up the space around him; Izzy, who danced circles around him, who ran and jumped and raced, never slowing; and even Luke, with his strong bones and his quick hands that stirred and sliced and cut. 

“Answer me,” the man said quietly. “Tell me your names.”

But not this man. His voice was light and almost dancing, and he was quiet and calm and steady. Grounded. Alec trusted what he knew and this man was unfamiliar. He didn’t know him. He didn’t trust him with an answer. 

Rightly so, considering the blade pointed at him. 

“I’m only going to ask you one more time,” he said, with the disinterested air of someone commenting on the weather. Alec opened his mouth, but the words wouldn’t come out. He had no idea what to say. These people were raiders, were here for something in the Kingdom, and there was no telling what they would do when they found out who he and Izzy were. 

“Lydia,” Izzy blurted out. 

Alec froze. His captor tightened their grip on his arms and Alec exhaled sharply, pain lancing down to his hands. Lydia was the name of one of Izzy’s friends, someone who lived and worked in the Kingdom. 

“My name is Lydia,” Izzy continued. “This is my friend, Ash.”

“Lydia,” Alec hissed, piling warning into his voice.

“Your friend,” the man said dubiously. 

“They’re useless,” scoffed the person behind Alec. Alec blinked in surprise; his own captor was a girl, a woman. She had a voice that rang out like clear bells. 

“You don’t know that,” the man said lightly. Everything he said was light, unbothered. He barely moved. The dagger was still pointed straight at Alec, and the blade did not shake. 

“You can’t honestly trust them,” the woman said. “Magnus, they’re wearing palace clothes. I don’t think even your father has cloaks like these. The rest of the villagers probably wear rags and roll around in the dirt all day.”

Magnus. Was that the man’s name?

“If you wouldn’t mind, Clary,” Magnus said lowly. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t mention my father in present company.”

The woman, Clary, subsided, although Alec could hear her grinding her teeth together. Her breath was hot on the back of Alec’s neck, and he grimaced in disgust. 

“They can’t be both things,” said the other man, the one holding Izzy. He looked to be a bit younger than Magnus, more of a boy than a man. He shifted his hold on Izzy, who took the opportunity to kick him in the shin. The boy winced, and his voice was slightly higher when he said, “They can’t be useless and lying about who they are. That doesn’t make any sense.”

“If what my accomplice says is true, then you two came straight from the palace, yes?” Magnus ran a finger over the end of his dagger. “Now, what would a young man and a young woman be doing running from the palace? Surely that’s the safest place for you.”

He was humouring them, Alec realised. His stomach dropped unpleasantly; they had to make it more believable, if they were going to get out of this alive. 

“We work at the Castle together,” Alec said. “I’m a kitchen servant.”

“A kitchen servant?” Clary echoed, the smirk evident in her voice. 

“Yes,” Alec snapped frostily. “It’s what they call servants who work in the kitchen. It’s not a difficult concept.”

Izzy laughed loudly, unafraid, in the ensuing silence. 

“That doesn’t explain why you were running away,” Magnus said softly. He lowered the blade a little, but did not put it away. 

“No, but the raid does,” Izzy said, rolling her eyes. 

“The rest of your crew swarmed the Castle,” Alec said. He was angry now, angry enough that it blotted out most of the fear. “And I don’t have to answer to you, anyway. You’ve been raiding our homes for weeks now, taking whatever you can get your grubby little hands on. You’re the ones in the wrong here, not us.”

The blade came back up. Alec reluctantly clicked his teeth together. 

“You can threaten me all you like,” Alec said, a little calmer. “It won’t make a difference. The Royal Family has been captured, and the Kingdom is under siege. We ran this way to hide, to get to safety. I don’t know what else to tell you.”

“You can tell me what happened to the Royal Family.”

Magnus’s voice grew sharp and Alec’s mouth fell open in surprise. He could see Izzy frown in confusion; they had missed something crucial here. 

“Your raiders broke into the dining room where the Prince, the Princess and the King were eating,” Izzy said slowly. 

“They came in through the window,” Alec added. “They used these hooks to break the glass and climb up the walls, and the guards ran in to help them. The servants, including us, fled the scene. I didn’t see what happened afterwards.”

There was a long moment of silence, and then Magnus swore under his breath. The other two remained silent, although Clary’s grip tightened even further, enough to make Alec suspect that he would have bruises the size of fingerprints come morning. 

A scream came from somewhere behind them, faint and high-pitched. Alec winced; he still had no idea where they were with regards to the rest of the Kingdom, or why the ground was different here. All he could see were rough outlines and a glowing orb, and a much larger glowing orb hanging in the sky behind Magnus. 

Alec squinted. Now that he thought about it, it was strange that the moon was visible. He could see all of it, every inch of it’s round face; usually, the Wall hid it until it reached its peak, as it did with the sun. 

Another scream broke the silence, a scream that came from behind them, and then Alec caught his breath. Realisation struck him, cold and hard and frightening, like a brick to the stomach. The screams were behind them. The ground was unfamiliar. He could see the moon. 

“I—Lydia, where are we?” he asked, panicking slightly, but he already knew the answer. Izzy tensed, but said nothing. 

Izzy had brought them through the Wall and out the other side. They were standing on the black beach, the ashen shore. The ground beneath his feet was made up of thousands of flakes of black, gritty sand. It was all that was left of the forest that once bloomed here, thriving with noise and life and light. The moon hung low in the sky, a sphere of bone suspended over the frozen ocean. 

“These are the dead lands,” Alec whispered. “What have you done?”

Nobody had been outside the Wall since it had been built, all those years ago. There was no telling what was out here, creeping in the shadows and seething in the silence, waiting and prowling and watching. 

“Creatures addled by old magic,” Luke had said once, when a younger Alec had asked him earnestly why he couldn’t visit the ocean, put his hands to the glassy surface and sense the power beneath it. “They’re more than animal, now. They’re something else, fierce and angry, waiting out there in the dark. That’s why we don’t leave this place.”

“If they’re telling the truth, then the raiders have the Royal Family,” Magnus said grimly. “There’s no telling what they might do to them, and we’ve already wasted enough time here. We haven’t got a chance of getting to the Prince and Princess now.”

A fresh wave of fear washed over Alec. These people were looking for them. Possibly the only thing keeping them alive was the fact that they had proclaimed to work in the Castle. Did they want information, or their lives? Did they want them alive and talking or dead and dealt with?

“What do you want with them?” Alec asked. Nobody so much as looked at him, except for Izzy, who looked properly afraid for the first time that night. 

“We’ll take them with us,” Magnus decided. “Better to come back with the wrong people than come back empty-handed, and they may know something. The King can decide what to do with them when we get to our Kingdom.”

Another Kingdom, Alec thought faintly. Another King. 

A smirk lit up Magnus’s face, and Alec was halfway forward, anger shooting through him, when something heavy came down on the back of his head, and he dropped swiftly into the waiting blackness.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “He can’t see,” Clary said curtly. 
> 
> “Excuse me?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's violence in this one! Not very graphic, although there's a bit at the very end, it's kind of canon-typical though. I hope you enjoy it! Thank you so much!

Pale light pierced the canopy of black leaves. Alec blinked slowly; it felt like someone had attached heavy weights to the tip of each eyelash, and his head was throbbing angrily. He didn’t know how long he had been unconscious for, but he felt the same way he did when he accidentally fell asleep in the middle of the day and woke up hours later, to disorientating darkness. 

Wherever he was, it wasn’t comfortable. He was slumped against something hard, something that dug into his shoulder blades. There was a pressing ache behind his eyes, as though his head had been filled with bricks while he slept. All he could see was blackness, the thin outlines of branches stretching across the sky above him. 

“You took your time.”

Alec struggled to sit up. It was awkward, with his hands tied behind his back, but he managed it, breathing shallowly. He recognised the soft, impatient lilt to Izzy’s voice, whispered near his ear. He blinked, hard, until his vision began to clear, and he could see properly. He could see people moving around in the darkness, a large, shapeless lump in the middle of the clearing, and the forest all around them. 

“You were knocked unconscious,” Izzy said quietly. She was next to Alec, leaned up against the same hard thing. If Alec had to guess, he would say that it was a fallen tree trunk, or a log of some kind. Their shoulders were pressed together, and the slight warmth was comforting. 

“I was?” 

Izzy nodded. “Luckily it wasn’t on ice, because nobody broke your fall. That girl actually moved away on purpose.”

“Not on ice,” Alec said slowly. “No, it wasn’t ice, was it? In fact, we were nowhere near any ice. We were on sand. Black sand.”

Izzy stayed quiet. She shifted a little, moving until they were no longer touching. Alec swivelled around as best he could, so he could fix Izzy with an accusing stare. 

“What the hell were you thinking?” he hissed angrily. It felt wrong, on some fundamental level, being this angry at Izzy. 

“I was _thinking_ ,” Izzy whispered back, “that we needed a place to go. I was thinking that we didn’t want to get snatched up by raider’s.”

“And yet here we are, in the middle of a raider’s encampment,” Alec said loudly, before he remembered to lower his voice. “And anyway, you know that’s not what I meant. How long have you known the Wall was unsafe? You knew there was a way out and you didn’t tell anyone! I don’t know what you thought you were doing, but it was reckless and stupid. You should have reported it straight away instead of keeping it a secret.”

“I’m not a child,” Izzy said coldly. “Don’t treat me like one.”

“Well, don’t act like one then. Did it ever occur to you that that’s where the raiders were coming in?”

“It only showed up the other day, and I don’t know how it got there, okay?” Izzy snapped. 

“How did you even come across it?”

“I found it when I was on a morning run. And I didn’t go outside, I just looked through it. It’s not a crime to look through things, is it?”

Alec shook his head in disbelief. He felt sick to his stomach. He was often annoyed with Izzy, but in the way all siblings got annoyed at each other. He had never felt this kind of sick dread before, this awful, furious churning in his gut. 

“You could have gotten hurt,” Alec whispered finally. “If that’s where the raiders were coming in, you could have gotten seriously injured. Nobody’s been outside the Wall in years. Anything could have been waiting for you out there. Anything could have happened to you.”

Alec didn't know what he would do if he lost Izzy. He couldn't imagine his life without her, and he didn't want to. Izzy shifted again, this time pressing their shoulders together firmly. An apology. 

“Alec,” Izzy said suddenly, breaking the tense silence that had fallen. “I have to tell you something—” 

There was an abrupt cacophony of noise from the misshapen lump in the middle of the clearing. Alec winced; it sounded as if a hundred metal pots had just tumbled down a set of steel steps. A breeze swept through the camp, shifting the leaves above them and letting more light in. The lump became a tent, illuminated by the thin light, like the tents that the Traders used to protect their stalls. 

Alec’s brow creased. It was possible that the Traders were still stuck inside the Kingdom, drawn into the attack by the raiders. There was no personal connection between the Traders and the Kingdom, only a business one, but it was possible that they had decided to help anyway, even if it was just to save their own skin. The Traders were secret and unknowable, but they weren’t unkind, and the Kingdom stood a better chance at surviving if the Traders decided to help protect it. 

Someone stepped smoothly out of the tent, carrying a leather bag between their hands. 

It was a girl. She was short, with pale skin. Her red hair was twisted into a thick, short plait down the side of her head, threaded with strands of gold and silver. She began to stride purposefully towards them, her nose held high as she regarded them distastefully, and Alec took an instant dislike to the expression. 

She came to a stop in front of them and reached towards Alec, who leaned back out of the way. The girl rolled her eyes.

“Calm down,” she said. “I’m not here to hurt you.”

Alec regarded her incredulously. The girl was all of five foot, and Alec may have been tied up, but he was pretty sure he could take her. He had been caught off guard before, but now he was alert, on edge. 

He did nothing to help as he was dragged to the side, letting his body go limp, and the girl was huffing and puffing by the time she finally slung Alec against a tree stump. She sat down heavily in front of Alec and glared at him, opening her bag and pulling out all manner of familiar things, setting them down beside her, arranging them in neat rows. There were little pots and corked vials, leaves wrapped in other leaves and bits of burlap that presumably kept certain herbs safe and fresh. 

“There’s no point in struggling,” the girl said lightly. “I tied those knots myself. You won’t be getting out of them soon.”

Alec recognised her voice. It was the girl who had tied his hands together on the beach, outside the Wall. Clary, Alec remembered. 

“You hurt yourself when you came through that wall,” Clary continued, with a longsuffering expression. “Apparently, we now cater to our captives.”

Alec snorted derisively. “There’s a difference between coming through a Wall willingly and being dragged through it. I wouldn’t have any wounds if it weren’t for all of you.”

Clary waved a dismissive hand and then gestured to Alec’s arms and shoulders. His cloak was full of rips and the skin beneath it was scraped raw, red and still bleeding from the rough brick of the Wall.

“I’ve got to clean those. If you get infected, I’m leaving you out here in the middle of the forest.”

Alec arched an eyebrow, dubious. “You’re a Healer?”

“I’ll mix this,” Clary said, picking up various ingredients with deft fingers and a dark glare. “You find something to entertain yourself with. Silently. I’m not one for conversations with enemies.”

Alec bit back a sharp retort. _You’re the enemy here,_ he wanted to say. _You’re the ones who kidnapped us and took us away from our home._ But he could already tell that it wasn’t worth wasting his breath; Clary barely glanced at him as she selected her herbs. 

Alec sighed and glanced around, curious to see where they had been taken. It was obvious enough that they were in a forest. The floor beneath him was hard-packed earth and dirt, but it didn’t feel like the soft, sweet-smelling stuff that lay behind Luke’s house, where he coaxed life into reluctant plants and herbs. Each grain was the colour of ash and mud and soot. Stones and twigs lay scattered around. The twigs were warped, and the stones were shrivelled up like raisins; some were smooth, but most were wrinkled and grey, as if the life had been sucked out of them. 

There was no snow, no ice, and the air was warm, the way it had been in the Trader’s tent. 

Trees stood all around, closely clumped together like the teeth on a comb. Some were twisted around each other, their branches entwined in a dark embrace, but that was where the likeness with his storybook trees ended. These trunks were blackened and charred, and the leaves were black too, thin and translucent. Some trees had been cut in half, leaving nothing but thick stumps blackened with mould, as if a massive scythe had sliced the tops clean off. 

But it had not been a scythe that killed the forest. 

He cast his gaze around the forest, unwilling to think about the horror that had spread through the forests years ago. The beach they had been dragged onto had been a forest once. 

He glanced at Izzy’s hunched form, at the strange tents, and then at the edge of the clearing where a figure was standing, motionless. He could tell that it was that unnerving boy, Magnus, and he didn’t want to think about him, let alone look at him. There was danger under his skin. Alec looked away quickly.

His eyes fell on something else, something incomprehensible. He sucked in a horrified breath. 

In the centre of the clearing, there was another kind of light. It wasn’t the same as the one that usually brightened the sky, or even the white light that glinted off the snow in the South Kingdom. It wasn’t even the same encapsulated light that hung from Magnus’s throat on the beach. This was entirely different, a light with life at its core. 

“It took you long enough to notice,” Izzy muttered.   
Alec watched, wide-eyed, as the flames flickered within their circle of heavy stones. In his spell, the diagrams had been colourless wisps of pencil. These flames were not just orange; they were a mesmerising array of burnished golds and blossoming reds, each colour bright and unapologetic, a haze of sunset. 

“Why are you still looking?” Izzy hissed. She was tearing bits of leaves up in small increments, her movements limited by the ropes around her wrists. She had her face turned away from the fire, but the curious light cast an orange glow over her cheek, illuminating her fear and the tense, rigid line of her mouth. 

“It can’t hurt to look,” Alec said softly. He could sense Clary’s curious frown, but if she had questions, she kept them to herself, busily fiddling with herbs and bits of leaves in silence. 

“How can you possibly know that?” Izzy demanded in a low voice. “Nobody knows what it could do to us.”

Alec sighed. “I think it generates heat. They’re just warming something up, I think. Look.”

He jerked his head. There was a man kneeling beside the fire, assembling a kind of bracket out of thin branches. It stood over the crackling flames and leaned a little to the left, a small silver basin nestled on top of the strange structure. 

“Who knows what’s in it,” Izzy said darkly. “Probably some kind of poison.”

“Why would they want to poison us?”

Izzy made a wheezing sound and stared at him in disbelief. 

“They could have killed us sooner than this,” Alec pointed out, although the thought left him feeling uncomfortably ill. “I was unconscious for a while, so they could have just stabbed me and been done with it. They obviously need us for something. There are more of them than there are of us.”

“Only by one,” Izzy said, glancing at Clary. 

“Don’t even think about it,” Clary said, glaring at them both. Alec stared back, unimpressed. Clary wasn’t really the most intimidating person out there. “Not unless you want a knife through your back. Believe me when I say that I won’t hesitate.”

Izzy looked at her searchingly for a moment, and then smirked. She rolled her eyes, and then flinched as her gaze shifted to land on the fire. She seemed more scared of that than of Clary, which Alec could understand. The fire was volatile and unpredictable, although the man kneeling beside it didn’t look afraid. He finished assembling his sticks calmly and stood up, nodding with satisfaction before loping off into a thicket at the edge of the clearing. 

Alec tracked his progress, and then found his eyes drawn back to the one person he really didn’t want to look at. 

Magnus. 

It was such a bright, intriguing name. His hair was short and a little messy, and it gleamed like wet ink in the firelight. He was balanced on top of a smooth black boulder, feet set firmly apart. As he waved his hands through the air, his daggers danced. 

There was something about Magnus that struck Alec as unusual. It might have been the careful stiffness of his balance, or the curious way he held himself, but whatever it was, he couldn’t put his finger on it. He was missing something, something that should have been plainly obvious. 

“He can’t see,” Clary said curtly. 

“Excuse me?”

Clary took one look at his curious expression and sighed. She placed her bowl of half-prepared ingredients down on the ground beside her, nestling it between some sticks. 

“Magnus,” Clary said. “He’s blind.”

Alec jolted, his mouth dropping open. “He can’t see anything?”

“That’s the general definition of blind.” Clary rolled her eyes. She tossed her braid over her shoulder and fixed Alec with an incredibly serious stare. “I shouldn’t be talking to you about this. I shouldn’t be talking to you at all. You’re our captives.”

It was Alec’s turn to roll his eyes. “That’s ridiculous. I’m tied up, and even if I were to escape, the South Kingdom is under siege. I have nowhere to go.”

His voice trailed off quietly into nothing as the truth hit him. They couldn’t go home. Father could be dead, Jace could be dead. They could be hurt or captured, locked up somewhere waiting for help, and he was sat here, in a forest with his hands and feet bound, unable to do anything. 

His home was no longer his home. 

He inhaled deeply, practically a snarl. Clary was staring at him with an unsure expression. Alec shook himself and cleared his throat. He didn’t want to look weak in front of these people. 

“Besides,” Alec said. “You’ve already been careless with your words. I know who you came to find, and I know that you plan on taking us to another King.”

Clary looked reluctantly amused. “You have spirit, for a commoner in danger.”

Alec bristled. He couldn’t help it. All his life he had been taught to act like the Prince he was, to embrace the shoes he had been born to fill. He had grown up in a Castle, with maids and tutors, surrounded by the things he needed. He had never truly wanted for anything. And yet here he was, dressed in dirt and mistaken for a commoner at a first glance. 

Unfortunately, it made sense, and even more unfortunately, it worked in his favour. 

“I guess you’re right,” Clary said suddenly. “It’s not as if it’s a secret anyway, and you were bound to pick up on it during the journey. Magnus doesn’t like to talk about it, though.”

Alec’s ears pricked up in anticipation, and Izzy leaned in. 

“There isn’t much to the story,” Clary said mildly, shrugging. “He was born blind, or so the story goes. They couldn’t tell at first, because his eyes looked completely normal from the beginning. I think they worked it out after an hour or two. His parents decided to keep it a secret, so he grew up away from the rest of us, kept out of sight, but he hated it. When he was old enough, he made sure that everyone knew who he was.”

There was quiet for a moment as Alec digested this. He could hear the swish of Magnus’s sword as it sliced through the empty air, and the rustle of something slithering through some bushes. 

“Why was it kept a secret?”

Clary hesitated, as if she wasn’t sure she should be sharing anything. “The family is well-known. Magnus’s father wrongfully considered his blindness to be a weakness, something that could easily be exploited by those who had a grudge against the family. Supposedly, he kept it a secret so that Magnus would be safe.”

Alec thought of Izzy, how strong but reckless she was. He thought of Jace, and his laughing carelessness, the danger that haunted his heels. He thought of his father, locked away in his own mind. If there was anything Alec understood, it was the fierce need that came with protecting your family, the need to see them safe and well and unharmed. 

“That makes sense,” he said slowly, watching Clary’s blank face. “But you don’t agree. Why not?”

Clary bent her head forward, her plait sweeping against her knees. Alec ground his teeth together as the silence stretched. He didn’t know why he wanted to know so badly; he told himself it was because if they wanted to survive, they would need every scrap of information they could squeeze out of the raiders. 

His eyes fell on Magnus again. He couldn’t imagine what it was like, to be blind, and he didn’t want to try. He shouldn’t assume that it was horrible, that it was just something to be lived with – he didn’t know Magnus at all, and he couldn’t guess how he felt about it. Alec set his jaw and looked down at the ground, only to reel back with a sharp, strangled sound. 

Clary shot to her feet, her hand leaping to her belt as she surveyed the clearing critically. Magnus’s back had gone rigid and Izzy was staring at him as if he’d lost his mind. 

“What the hell is that?” Alec asked, breathless with a new kind of fear. Something was slithering along the ground. He had never seen anything like it before. 

Clary glanced at him, and then followed his gaze to where the creature moved through the thick leaves. She laughed, and shook her head, a smirk stealing over her features. Alec flushed, humiliation and anger curdling within him. 

“That’s Pandemonium, a Seeing Snake,” Clary said. “Pan helps guide Magnus to wherever he needs to go. She doesn’t bite unless she senses a threat, so don’t worry. You’re safe.”

Alec couldn’t find the energy to be offended by the implication. Instead, he pulled his feet a little closer and stared at the Seeing Snake. It – she – was longer than a tree laid flat on the ground. Thick skin winked oddly in the dim light. Her scales were the colour of the setting sun, a beautiful burnished orange. At the end of her tail was a thin glint of silver, a barb of some sort, sharp and deadly. Alec couldn’t see her face, but he imagined it would carry the same sort of deadly beauty that graced the rest of her body. 

“Pan,” Alec said quietly. The snake swerved smoothly towards the dead grass around Magnus’s stone and disappeared. Magnus relaxed immediately, stepping down from his stone and sheathing his daggers. 

Someone swore from further away, someone with a light, cheerful voice, and Clary stood abruptly, abandoning her work. 

“Simon and I will escort you to your tent once the ointment’s finished setting.”

We could run, Alec thought. While they’re occupied, we could run.

Almost as if she could hear Alec’s thoughts, Clary looked up, her eyes flashing warningly. “Don’t try anything stupid. You won’t get far.”

Alec faltered momentarily. By the time he thought to protest, Clary had ducked past the only tent and over to the edge of the clearing, presumably to help Simon. 

“She certainly has a high opinion of her abilities,” Izzy said. If anything, she sounded kind of admiring. 

“Unbelievable,” Alec said, grimacing as he flung himself back against the tree stump. The muscles in his arms were beginning to twinge painfully, and his wrists were raw beneath their bindings. The cords held fast no matter how much he shifted and tugged, and eventually, he gave up. 

After a few minutes of silent, reassuring conversation with Izzy, the man from before appeared across the clearing. This, he supposed, was the man called Simon. He was carrying an armful of dry logs and a large container under one arm, which sloshed promisingly as he marched towards the tent. Alec’s throat was suddenly parched. 

Simon dropped the wood next to the fire, although far enough away that the sparks wouldn’t land and catch, and then ducked into the tent with the container. 

Alec had been afraid of how they might be treated, but Simon brought them water, and a bowl each of thin broth from the silver basin. He was surprisingly gentle, and he helped Alec eat with only a few hidden grins. Alec drank it down eagerly, gasping as the hot liquid seared his throat. He had never eaten or drunk anything that wasn’t stone cold; the sensation was new, but not unwelcome. Simon looked at him idly, and then moved on to Izzy, who tried to bite him. 

Clary patched up their scraped with the salve that smelled familiar to him, although he couldn’t place the name. It made him think of Luke, and he grit his teeth, thinking of the cottage on Little Street. He wondered if Luke had escaped, or if he was still there, or perhaps in the clutch of the raiders. If there was anyone that could escape that fate, it was Luke. 

A slight headache began to pound behind his eyes. Wincing, Alec thought of kinder things; of his father’s eyes and the light glancing off the snow, of dances in the square and the view of the sea from a snow-specked window. 

*

“We need to move, immediately.”

Alec was ripped from sleep as long fingers gripped his shoulders, shaking him awake. He groaned, but went willingly, if a little dizzily to his feet. It felt as if he had only been asleep for minutes, but the sky had gotten considerably lighter, edging towards morning. He could barely see the moons’ shining face; it had dropped down behind the trees like a coin in a slot. 

Alec struggled to stay upright. He felt so tired that he could easily fall asleep where he was, on his feet, but that wasn’t an option. The hands on his shoulders belonged to Magnus, who stared over his shoulder unblinkingly. 

“Untie them,” Clary hissed, marching towards the fire pit. She kicked the sticks that made up the cooking platform until it collapsed, and then scuffed dirt over the remains of the fire, scattering ash into the air. Another tent had been constructed while Alec slept, and Simon stumbled out of it. 

“Bossy,” Magnus said under his breath, and then he slid his hands down Alec’s arms until he found his wrists. Alec shivered, stumbling back until his shoulder touched Izzy’s, but Magnus simply moved with him. 

“I need to untie you,” Magnus said. “We have company. Unless you happen to enjoy running with your ankles tied together, I suggest you stay still. Either that, or I can drag you along on the floor behind me.”

Alec felt a stab of fear and anger as he remembered that, blind or not, this man was dangerous. He gritted his teeth, but remained still as Magnus slipped a dagger from a pocket on the inside of his cloak and beckoned for him to turn. Alec caught Izzy’s gaze and held it. 

“Why the hurry?” Izzy asked innocently, eyes wide and fixed on Clary, who was standing at the edge of the clearing, dagger up and posture tense. Alec could hear a slight tremor in his sister’s tone that he knew would go unnoticed by everyone else; she was scared and trying not to show it. 

“I told you. We’re about to have company,” Magnus explained quickly, sawing at the ropes around Alec’s wrists. Alec winced: it looked like a herb knife, useful for chopping roots and slicing leaves, not cutting through thick ties. 

“I don’t see anyone,” Izzy said. 

“Neither do I,” Magnus said succinctly. He gave a little grunt, tugged extra hard on the ropes, and then made a pleased noise as they fell away, leaving Alec free to rub his sore wrists. 

“You can hear them,” Alec said slowly, realising, before Magnus could move away. “Your other senses – they must be heightened.”

Magnus didn’t reply. Instead, he thrust the knife into Alec’s hands and turned around slowly.

“Untie the other one,” he said, and then made a content sound as Pan appeared at his feet, hissing. Alec resisted the urge to run away from the snake, moving instead to slice at the cords around his ankles. He made quicker work of it than Magnus, who turned and shouted, “We need to move!” 

For a single second, Alec stood still, frozen with anticipation. They could escape – no-one was watching them. Their captors were all preoccupied, hastily preparing to leave. He could free Izzy and then run. 

“Alec,” Izzy hissed. “Hurry up!” 

Alec shook himself out of his trance. Ahead of him, Magnus tilted his head back slightly, as if he was looking at him out of the corner of his eye, although that was impossible. He felt himself droop in resignation; even if they did manage to run without any of the others catching up to them, they would have nowhere to go and no food or water to keep them alive. 

“Alec,” Izzy said sharply. 

Alec turned on his heel abruptly, startling Izzy, who hastily presented her wrists. Alec threaded the knife through a thin loop in the ropes and began to cut. It was awkward, but he managed it. 

"Names," he murmured. "Use the right names."

Izzy winced. “Were you thinking of running?” 

Alec jerked his head towards Magnus, who was moving closer. “He can probably hear you. And there’s no point.” He sawed hard at the ropes, frustration lending him strength, and they snapped in half. Izzy shook her hands loose. She was filthy and tired, but she looked determined. 

“His senses can’t be that good, surely. What do you think is coming?” asked Izzy quietly. 

“I don’t know.” Alec slipped the knife into the pocket of his cloak. If he was lucky, Magnus might forget that he had it at all. “But I imagine we don’t want to be here to meet it, whatever it is. Come on.” He grabbed Izzy’s hand and pulled her into the centre of the clearing. 

The fire was completely smothered. Clumps of ash clung to the base of Alec’s shoes as he kicked pieces of charred wood out of the way, tugging Izzy along behind him. For once, Izzy held on without a fuss, only rolling her eyes once or twice. Simon emerged from the mouth of the tent as they reached it, frowning and carrying several leather bags. They were rough and the colour of rust, tied closed with black cords. 

“Here,” Simon said, and he tipped several bags into Alec’s arms. “You’re in charge of these.” 

Alec dropped Izzy’s hand, stumbling back with a small oomph. The bags were heavy and the contents clacked together angrily as Alec rearranged them. Izzy took the top one off the pile so that Alec could see, slinging it over her shoulder. 

“Magnus!” Clary shouted, standing with her hands on her hips. “Which direction is it coming from?”

Magnus pointed South, head tipped to the side in a remarkably bird-like manner. Pan wrapped herself around one of his ankles and hissed, long and low. The sound sent a shiver up Alec’s spine. 

Clary didn’t wait for any more instruction. She strode across the clearing, grabbed hold of Magnus’ arm and shoved him towards Alec. 

“Take them North,” she said, with a firm, decisive nod. 

A muscle ticked in Magnus’ jaw. “I’m perfectly capable of fighting with you two.”

Clary rolled her eyes. “And I’m perfectly aware of that, but we don’t usually have two prisoners with us. Take them away from here, get to somewhere safe, and we’ll meet you soon.”

“You don’t even know what it is,” Magnus pointed out. 

“Neither do you,” Clary snapped back. “Now go.”

Magnus didn’t look like the kind of person who took orders from a tiny red-head, if his cool stare said anything. Clary wilted slightly, and then muttered something in his ear. Magnus whirled around and stalked away from the campfire. Clary watched him go with a fierce glare on her face, while Pan unhooked herself and slunk through the twigs towards them. As the snake drew closer, Alec could see that her eyes were amber, smoky spheres with narrow pupils, set into her flat head. They looked like cat’s eyes. 

The snake slithered right past Alec and took the lead, a darting arrow of shining scales. Alec tripped and stumbled his way through the tall copse of trees, Izzy right behind him. Magnus brought up the rear, shouting at them to move faster. They ran for a fair few minutes before Izzy had enough. 

“We should be helping, not running,” Izzy yelled behind her. “You want to help, I know you do.”

Magnus didn’t reply, simply shoving at their backs. Alec dug his heels in at the same time as Izzy, and Magnus ricocheted off their backs and staggered sideways into a tree. He looked bewildered, and a little lost, as if nobody had dared to disobey him before. Then he glowered into the distance from under his dark, short lashes. 

“Fine,” Magnus snapped. “You think you can help, then fine. I don’t know what kitchen servants in your Kingdom are capable of, but I highly doubt you’re trained in combat. On your own head, be it.”

He wasn’t looking anywhere near him, but Alec could feel the force of his scowl rip through him. He took a steadying breath, but he still felt shaky with adrenaline and fear. 

“Give me my knife back,” Izzy demanded, sticking her hand out, palm facing up. “We can’t help without a weapon.”

Magnus arched an eyebrow, looking unimpressed, but grudgingly dug inside one of the bags, pulling out a wickedly curved blade and a short metal spear. Izzy grabbed the blade before Alec had even drawn breath, and he aimed a glare at his sister, but Izzy simply passed him the spear. 

“This is a close-range weapon,” Izzy explained, waving her blade. “Yours is for throwing. You can keep back out of the way.”

Alec spluttered in protest, but Izzy was already darting away after Magnus, who looked rather amused. Pan had disappeared into the bushes. Alec didn’t particularly want to get close to whatever had them all running scared, but he resented being told to hide in the background while his sister fought. He was just as well-trained as Izzy. Well, almost. He looked at the spear in his hand and grimaced. It didn’t even look that sharp. 

“I guess it’ll have to do,” Alec grumbled, and then he took off at a run.

Izzy was fast, but Alec wasn’t an invalid. He caught up to them at the edge of the clearing, pretending that the stitch in his side didn’t exist and fervently wishing that he hadn’t avoided so many morning runs this year, or the year before that. 

Izzy was kneeling behind a tangle of bracken and brambles, and Magnus crouched behind a tree, tapping a rhythm against the trunk with the tip of his index finger. Alec followed suit, pressing himself up against the bark and narrowly avoiding stepping on Pan’s tail. The snake had appeared out of nowhere and was half-curled around Magnus’ neck. Alec leaned away from the snake, still wary, and almost gagged at the rotting stench that pervaded the tree trunk. It smelled as though the tree was dying, but Alec knew it was already dead – the top had been seared off, leaving a tall, blackened stump behind, just roughly the right size to hide them from view. 

His breath misted on the air; a cold wind had blown in from the South. He could hear the steady thundering of something approaching, something with big, heavy feet. 

“We move when I say so,” Magnus whispered. Almost in unison, the three of them rose to a stand. 

A deafening roar broke the silence, a sound of pure rage and hunger. It shook the roots of the trees, sending a storm of vibrations through the earth. Alec rocked back on his heels, stunned. 

He dug his hand into the soft tree trunk, fear making his heart skip. The air around him, which had been still, began to stir and rustle eagerly. He felt a pull in his chest, just behind his ribs, and stared as green moss seeped from underneath his fingertips, clinging to the tree trunk. He yanked his hand back quickly and clutched it to his chest. Fear had given him a strange sort of strength, and he had given it to the forest. 

The roar came again, close by this time, and something large and purple burst through the trees in front of them, skidding into the clearing. Alec gaped in horror at the creature, and then sucked in a breath as Clary burst out of the opposite side of the clearing. 

The creature was roughly the size of a building. It sank down on all fours, its’ massive head pressed to the earth. It was overwhelmingly large, a hulking mass of stinking, matted fur that was stained purple, the colour of poisonous berries. Thin black slits peered around the clearing. A gaping maw revealed a mouthful of razor-thin fangs, gleaming in the dank light. 

It batted one large, wickedly-clawed paw at Clary, who dived smoothly out of the way and rolled to a crouch behind a large rock. Simon was nowhere in sight. Magnus seemed to be holding his breath. 

Izzy blanched. “What is it? It looks like something out of a nightmare.”

Alec glanced sharply at his sister. They weren’t supposed to talk about nightmares, or dreams, even if they were joking. Nightmares were the windows to the soul, and could take the shape of your deepest fears, bringing them to life. They were woven out of dark magic. 

“I don’t know,” Magnus said. “Whatever it is, it’s circling, and it doesn’t sound like it’s going to stop attacking anytime soon.”

“We probably encroached on its’ territory,” Alec reasoned absently. 

Magnus jerked his head at the clearing, hand pressed flat to the tree. “I can feel it circling. When it turns around, we attack it from behind, understood?” 

Alec turned back to the battle and jerked in surprise. Clary was right underneath the monster, rolling about between its’ feet and jabbing at the underside of its’ belly with her sword. The monster roared, stamping erratically at the ground with enough force to shake the forest apart, trying to squash Clary flat. 

Clary crawled underneath it, towards the back legs, and threw a small silver disc at the meaty part of the monster’s thigh. The disc curved gracefully, arcing and slicing through thick fur and then returning to Clary’s hand. She threw it again, and this time it sank into flesh and took hold. 

The monster howled and sprang around, presenting its filthy, matted back to them. Clary’s disc was still poking out of the monster’s leg, but she was no longer visible behind the creature’s colossal body. 

Pan hissed urgently, her eyes glowing faintly. 

“Now,” Magnus said, darting out from behind the tree. Izzy threw herself to the left, and Magnus went right. 

Alec stayed where he was. He moved out from behind the tree, but knelt down in the black mud. His clothes bunched around his knees and he winced as a twig snapped beneath his weight, but he remained where he was. There was no point, he thought, in throwing himself into a battle when he could do more damage from afar. He just had to wait for the right moment. 

He glanced at the tree that he had been crouched behind. Half of the stump was blanketed in moss now, fresh springy stuff, the colour of emeralds. Beneath it, the wood was beginning to bleed into a soft brown colour. He grinned and felt the energy around him crackle delightedly. 

Maybe he wouldn’t need to use the spear after all. There was still magic in the forest, waiting to be used. 

He turned back to the clearing, watching with increasing anxiety as Izzy scooted around one of the monster’s legs, hacking away with the dagger, unafraid. Magnus’ attacks were a little more practiced, smooth and precise. He stabbed and struck with his swords, staying as still as possible whilst still managing to avoid being stepped on. Alec didn't know how he fought without being able to see, but he was nothing but grace. 

The monster’s legs were beginning to give way, wobbling and shaking. It let out a strangled growl as it stumbled backwards. Clary dashed into view, sludgy black blood dripping from her hand. Alec grimaced. 

A dark, menacing sound to his right made Alec tense up. The others were distracted, still attacking the monster, which had begun to howl with pain. Arrows sliced through the air with surprising accuracy, and Alec finally caught sight of Simon, perched in the upper branches of a tree, his face a mask of concentration. He fired another arrow into the monster’s face, completely unaware of the danger creeping up on him.

Alec peered fearfully into the darkness behind Simon. 

Two thin eyes gleamed hungrily. They were slits, just like the other monster, but this one’s attention was fixed solely on Simon. Alec caught his breath, barely noticing as the first monster slumped to the ground with a desolate howl, dead or dying. He could feel the energy in the forest coming alive around him as he muttered beneath his breath; his eyes sharpened, and he could see the hulking shape of the creature and the fat paw that had begun to arc towards Simon’s branch. 

Alec burst out from behind the trees. He lifted the heavy spear and swung it in a graceful arc, watching it sail over the clearing. The wind whirled around the spear, lending it speed and strength as it streaked towards the monster.   
Simon’s look of satisfaction morphed into one of shock as the spear whipped past his shoulder and impaled itself in the monster’s forehead. 

For a fraction of a second, the monster remained standing, unveiled in the light that suddenly pooled in the clearing. Then it dropped lifelessly to the floor, collapsing with a heavy crash against the black dirt, the spear still embedded between its rolling eyes. Black blood began to leak from the wound and drip onto the floor, splattering against the carpet of leaves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please leave some feedback, I'd love to know what you think. And come say hey @thealmostrhetoricalquestion on tumblr. Thank you so much!

**Author's Note:**

> Wow, hope you liked that! I will go back through with a comb and edit it at a later date, because I know there's probably a couple of mistakes. Please leave a comment/kudos and let me know what you thought, I'd really love to hear from you guys. And come say hey @thealmostrhetoricalquestion on tumblr. Thank you so much!


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